Review: "Guard My Heart" by Sabrina Fedel

Guard My Heart by Sabrina Fedel
Published October 2026 via Delacorte Romance
★★★

For Ryleigh, hockey is just about everything—or, if not everything, it's at least her first love and (she hopes) her ticket to an elite university. Dating is definitely not in the plan. An attractive Canadian hockey player is definitely not in the plan.

Formula 1 books are on the rise, but in the meantime the sports romances all seem to be hockey hockey hockey. I suspect we all know what is responsible for this...and while I don't have a particular affinity to hockey books (no objection, of course, just no specific interest), here we are.

There's quite a bit to like here. First, although Ryleigh is good—she's a goalie and she knows her stuff—she's not the best or the strongest one out there. She can hold her own, but her last season was rough, and she knows that her college options may be limited. On the one hand this feels like a small thing (obviously not everybody can be the best!), but on the other hand I read so many YA books that have quite a lot of wish fulfilment in them—teenager gets a major publishing deal, wins a major science prize, is valedictorian, etc.—that it's always nice to read about teenagers who have dreams but a) have to work for them and b) have to be realistic about those dreams.

The romance is also nice. Ryleigh is a little prickly at first, but she loosens up once she starts to trust Jett a bit; Jett, for his part, manages to be an all-around good guy. (Having read one too many "she's a doormat and he's a raging asshole" books, it's always a relief when he's not a raging asshole. Did I say one too many? I might have meant a hundred too many.) There is a wee bit of wish fulfilment in their romance (he's the hottest new thing at school, smart and attractive and as sure a bet for the NFL as you can get, and he's spending all his free time with Ryleigh, etc. etc.), but I'll take that if it means we get a decent person in the mix.

I do have quibbles. First, Ryleigh is quite small for a hockey goalie (probably for a hockey player at all), and this is mentioned repeatedly—enough to remind me of the romance trend of "she's so little and he's so big, oh my" that, well, I wished she'd just been a bit taller and it wasn't a plot point. Second, there's a mean-girl plot, and although it's not the most dramatic mean-girl plot I've seen, I'm of an age where I'd just rather see more about platonic friendship and less about mean girls who are on the prowl. And finally...there's significant discussion in the book of what schools might be possibilities, and Cornell is one of the schools in play. The potential for a scholarship is one of the discussion points here, and it's not an insignificant one—Ryleigh's one of several kids, her family isn't wealthy, they're probably still paying off medical bills, etc. But: The Ivy League schools don't give athletic scholarships. This policy has been in place since the 1950s, and they (including Cornell) only give need-based scholarships. Now, I'm not saying that this policy has never been flaunted—I'm sure that creative recruiters have found ways to sweeten the deal for student athletes. But generally...as I understand it, it's not a thing. I did read an ARC, so this might be fact-checked and corrected before publication, but in a book that is so enthusiastic about hockey I found it a bit odd that nobody looked into what scholarships are likely from what schools.

Overall fun and nicely balanced; a couple of Fedel's other books have been on my radar for a while, and it's probably time to track them down.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.