I didn't actually realise this was fourth in a series when I requested the ARC for it, so maybe that factors into why I didn't enjoy the book as much as I could have. I'm guessing other people appreciated the cameos from characters from previous books.

It wasn't bad, there are just much better sports/ice-hockey/brothers friends romances out there. I felt as though the situations the characters found themselves in were a little immature for their ages and the dialogue wasn't much better. I found myself just suffering through the book as opposed to actually enjoying it.

Again, it wasn't bad, just very middle of the road.

Wow, what a rollercoaster of emotions this was!

I adore this series, and Wicked Serve once again proves why Grace Reilly is one of the best Sports Romance authors out there.

It’s fluffy, it’s spicy, it’s swoon worthy - but also, it tackles topics that are hard hitting and fragile but it’s written so well.

Seeing Nik and Iz after their summer fling is the perfect starting point - it almost gave me Grease vibes. The tension is there, and boy do the fireworks start from there.

I absolutely loved seeing the friendship and family dynamics change in this one, especially with Cooper. And I loved seeing how Iz matures despite being slightly bratty at the beginning.

Sports smut central.

I absolutely adore this series and this book was probably my favourite of them all. Nik absolutely had my heart from the start and I also adored Izzy. This book tackled some heavy topics while also managing to being lighthearted, romantic and steamy.
Seeing the rest of the family and their partners was also wonderful and I wish there was another sibling left for another book!
Highly recommend not this book but the whole Callahan siblings series.

3.5⭐⭐⭐

This was a beautiful conclusion to the series! I really loved Izzy and Nik as a couple, they had great banter and surprisingly good communication skills most of the time. It was also nice to see some beloved characters from previous books and see their HEAs play out.

My only issue is with the pacing of the book. We start after Izzy and Nik already had a summer fling, so a lot of the beginning stages of their relationship are lost to the reader. A lot of the book felt like "third act conflict" to me and I missed the warm and fuzzy feelings from the getting-to-know-each-other-phase to tide me over.

I thoroughly enjoyed Nikolai and Izzy’s story. It’s much more than just a spicy love story, it’s about pain, growth, communication, acceptance, and family. All the Callahan family are here, which is great as we get to catch up on them too.

4.5 stars

A spicy sports romance seems to be my read of the summer and I'm happy to add 'Wicked Serve' to the list of books I've really enjoyed. This is the first book in the Beyond the Play series I've picked up and Nikolai and Izzy's story was a lovely place to start.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about the story of Nikolai and Izzy's romance is we join it after the meet-cute, when they've already fallen in love but aren't admitting it to themselves yet. When your relationship starts to get more serious and the cracks can show. It made for a book that I kept wanting to turn the pages and wishing for a happy ending for both of the main characters.

I will definitely be picking up the other books in this series because all the characters captured my interest.

I love this series, so I was so excited to get to read wicked serve. Grace Reilly has become an automatic buy author for me. Nik and Isabelle’s story was cute and funny. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and this series as a whole. Definitely recommended all Grace Reilly’s books!!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series focused on each of the Callahan siblings and Izzy's story did not disappoint! The spice was top notch and the development of her and Nik's relationship felt natural to read. I am very much looking forward to reading whatever GR decides to publish next :)

OK, this was good. Really good!

I've not read any previous books from this series but it worked just fine as a standalone. I LOVED isabelle and Nik, their obvious attraction and deep relationship was everything. And the spice.....so much spice!!
I'll definitely be reading the other books in this series. Sports romances are one of my favourite tropes at the moment and this one definitely hit the mark!

2.5 ⭐️

This book follows hockey player Nikolai who transfers to a rival school while dealing with his feelings for Isabelle, his teammate's sister. Isabelle, is a volleyball player who struggles to resist rekindling her romance with Nikolai as their connection grows stronger.

This was my first time reading anything by Grace Reilly and I feel like I should have read the previous books in the series before getting into this one because of how many characters were introduced all at once and that made a lot of things hard to understand. Not gonna lie, it took me ages to finish this book— it’s just another hockey romance book, I don’t think it has anything to stand out from the story. This book has no business in being this long… it really feels like the author filled it with chapters with unnecessary scenes unmethodically. The main characters were already together by the 20% mark of the book —from my stand point, that killed the tension— hence to why this book wasn’t for me.

Read if you like:
🏒 college romance.
🏒 bother’s rival.
🏒 found family.
🏒 secret relationship.

Thank you to Headline and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Wicked Serve by Grace Reilly will be coming out on August 13th.

Keeping this short because there's not much to critisize: it's an emotional and heartwarming read that was able to steal a laugh or sob from me every now and then. Nik and Izzy are amazing characters and it's just a great way to end this series.

Beyond the Play has become a favourite sports romance series of mine! Although they can all be read as standalones, I loved getting to know the characters throughout the series and was already so excited for Wicked Serve before reading it as we had hints of Nik and Izzy's story coming in previous books. I loved getting to know them both in WS, especially Nik who we'd seen very little of. In this brother's rival-turned-teammate forbidden romance, we get all the spice and tension we're used to seeing in Grace Reilly's series.
I thoroughly enjoyed their book - Izzy is so fun and bubbly but it was nice to see her developing to have more depth and seriousness in Wicked Serve. I loved seeing her career become clear and how much she loved wedding planning. I also really loved getting to know Nik - he's so precious! It was heartbreaking to see what he'd gone through but I really appreciated how his trauma was approached and dealt with. Some of the decisions he made towards the end made me really feel for him and appreciate him as a strong male character, without spoiling anything!
Personally for me, I'd have liked to have seen them get together - this was similar to Stealing Home in that the main couple had already been hooking up when we see them at the start of the book, so it's a bit Second Chancey but it was still an enjoyable read. Spice wise, it's similar to Stealing Home - I think Breakaway was by far the spiciest of the series!
I also did find things a bit slow around half way - everything was good with the two of them so I felt like there was a good 10-20% that felt very mundane/waiting for things to fall apart. So for me, it was slightly longer than it needed to be and bits were a bit fillery but it was nice to see Nik and Izzy happy together. It does make me appreciate them as a solid couple and understand their love for each other.
I absolutely loved the epilogue and was close to tears with it - it was the perfect goodbye to the Callahan's!
Would definitely recommend this series if you enjoy a sports romance or want to give them a go!

Is this how parents feel when they see all their children happy and settled down? Because it was great to see Issy get her HEA.

After what was meant to be a summer fling ended up being a continued fling thanks to our MMC transferring to our FMCs college, we follow the story of Nikolai and Issy as they fall in love with each other and learn to open up and let others in.

I really enjoyed the relationship between the two of them - plus there were some very steamy scenes going on. However I agree with some other reviews where it would’ve been nice to have a bit more insight into when they first started seeing each other.

I thought the handling of some of the more sensitive subjects in the book was handled very well from all characters and it was great to see how the characters grew toward the end.

Overall it was a fun book and nice end to the series.

Thank you NetGalley and Headline for the ARC.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book.

I really wanted to love this book but it fell a little bit flat to me. I normally love college, hockey romances and the off-campus series is one of my absolute favourites. I really enjoyed the first 3 books from this series but I just couldn't get into this one. I'm not quite sure what didn't click for my but I didn't buy Nik and Izzy's relationship and struggled to finish this

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me and I DNF'd at 34%. I wish we'd got to see their relationship blooming from their summer instead of jumping in half way through. I know it's a college romance but both characters felt really immature. I preferred Nik to Isabelle but they aren't my favourite couple. It's a long book and it was dragging Apart from a few sex scenes nothing had really happened. I wasn't excited to pick it up.

Won't review anywhere else as I didn't finish

It’s a really cute book, really funny and entertaining, is a really easy book to have a great time.
I love Nikolai and Izzy, the love for their sports, the support that give to each other but something just doesn’t click at all for me.
I enjoyed the book a ton, I really had a good time with it but something missing for me.
I

3⭐️ I think I need to give up on this series...

I loved Breakaway, but after that one, this series seems to have taken a turn, and I can't get behind it. The romance is already halfway there when the story begins. We miss the meet-cute (or not-so-meet-cute), the will-they/won't-they, the first touch, the first kiss, the first everything... We're thrown into what in other's books is the third act break up. And I'm sure that's fun for someone, but that someone isn't me. The same happened in the last book of the series.

Also, the FMC in this book didn't really click for me. The MMC's family issues/abuse were a problem for me right til the end, and I understand that this in particular is a personal thing, and might not be a problem for others, but yeah. It was incredibly frustrating.

So, overall, this book really did not work for me, but it might work for you? Idk.

🌶🌶.5 / 5 - There's a handful of scenes and they're ok, but nothing too notable tbh.

This review has already been uploaded to Goodreads :)

Having never read any of the other books from the ‘beyond the play series’ I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to engage with the characters and the storyline. It took me a while to get started and once I did I read it extremely quickly.
It’s going to be a hit with the booktok community when released! I feel privileged that I got to read this early.

OMG, this is straight up going to the list of my favorite books ever! I can't even explain how much I loved this; there aren't enough words in English, or any other language for that matter, for me to do that! I was pretty confident no one could knock Cooper out of the first place, but boy was I wrong. While I love Cooper even more after this book, NIKOLAI!!! This man was perfect from start to finish!

I'm so sad to say goodbye to these characters because I really do love all of them and hope to see them again at some point. This is the end of an era, okay? But this book was such a wonderful closure to it that I can't even complain!!

I love how this wasn't the typical forbidden romance. While they did sneak around, I loved how they never said, "OMG, this was a mistake, we can't do this, what about this, what about that." Not once did they think it was a mistake, and I love that. I love that their story wasn’t filled with clichés just for the sake of it. The way their relationship evolved from a casual fling to friendship and then to full commitment felt so natural and wonderful.

I also really appreciate how carefully Grace preserves the characterization of her previous main characters. It's frustrating when reading a series and a beloved character suddenly becomes a villain or unlikeable. For instance, I was really worried Cooper would turn into an overprotective alpha older brother, which would ruin the affection I had for him in Breakaway. But, nope!!! Grace portrayed him in a perfectly balanced way that was believable and reminded me why he was such a great book boyfriend in his own story! The same goes for James and Sebastian! I was swooning over Nikolai AND the Callahan boys in this one!!! It simply was not fair!!!!!

I loved that the book focused on putting in the effort to overcome their insecurities and issues, rather than having an external 'big bad' threaten the relationship (like a protective older brother). I loved watching Nik gradually being welcomed into the Callahan family, finding the kind of support he lacked growing up. His developing friendship with Cooper was almost as heartwarming as the main romance! And I got to mention Cooper baiting Nik to take the toy soldier piece during their game of Monopoly – if you know, you know!

The way the main characters and their relationship were portrayed was really well done. Without giving too much away, their connection could have easily turned toxic, but the story kept things realistic and avoided unnecessary drama. Both Isabelle and Nik acted authentically, which I appreciated. It's refreshing to see young people portrayed as mature and thoughtful, instead of always being dramatic.

Nik's personal growth was particularly impressive; he went from being closed-off to being open and learning what it takes to have a healthy relationship. Isabelle was relatable with her lively personality, trying to balance her responsibilities and meet everyone's expectations, including her own, which were sometimes impossible.

Also, for the people who need to know…. The smut smutted. I need Nik in a biblical sense. You will too, I promise. I’ll just leave you with "good girl" and "crawl to me"... take that as you will! Seriously, you might want to keep a fan handy.

If you need any more reasons to dive into this perfection (and really, why would you?), here are some microtropes that make "Wicked Serve" absolutely irresistible: He calls her an adorable Russian nickname but doesn't reveal its meaning, he has a mysterious scar on his face, he keeps a photo he promised to delete, he made a deal that shattered his dreams but brought him closer to his dream girl, he remembers little details and surprises Izzy with the most heartfelt moments, he stands up to her brothers and tells them they’re hurting her feelings, there's no third act breakup, just an important pause, he takes her seriously when no one else does, and they even crash a wedding.

Nik and Izzy have my whole heart. There were definitely some emotional moments in this story; poor Nik had me in tears more than once. However, they both truly deserved their happy ending. My biggest gripe is that there are no more Callahans left for me to read about. I didn't want this book to end, but Grace wrote the best final chapter and epilogue ever. She wrapped up the Callahans' story perfectly, so even though it's finished, I feel really happy with how everything turned out. I'm thrilled to have had the chance to read it ahead of time, and I'm eagerly anticipating Grace's next work.

The final book for the Callaghan family siblings is one I’ve been looking forward to for a while!

Nik gets transferred to McKee University to play on their hockey team after a summer fling with Izzy (whose brother is captain of the hockey team and a big rival of Nik’s)
What was supposed to just be a summer fling soon turns to more, and neither can then deny their feelings from the summer.

We saw some hints about Izzy and Nik and I wasn’t sure I’d like Nik but he totally changed my opinion. Him and Izzy were perfect for each other. I loved their love and support- they were always in each other’s corners.

If you’ve read the previous books in this series, you get to see lots of the other Callaghan siblings and their partners which I really enjoyed- I always love getting to see past couples again in books.

Overall I felt the book was a little too long- the first half felt a bit drawn out and as though things could have progressed quicker. But I loved the ending and especially the epilogue where we got to see the whole Callaghan family!

Thank you to the author and Netgalley for this advance copy in exchange for my honest review.