Goal Line by Julia Connors
Boston Rebels #4
Sports Romance
Release Date: August 15, 2025
🏒 hockey player x figure skater
⛸️ childhood best friends to lovers
🏒 marriage of convenience
⛸️ accidental pregnancy (not his baby)
ABOUT THE BOOK:
As the youngest heir of the Hartmann fortune and the backup goalie for the Boston Rebels, the pro hockey team my family owns, I’ve spent my life being the peacemaker in my cutthroat family and the goalie that my teammates can depend on.
I have only one weakness: my coach’s daughter, Evangeline Wilcott.
Eva is a pairs figure skater, and my life-long best friend. I’ve always wanted more, but she friend zoned me back in high school and we’ve lived thousands of miles apart since.
Eight years later, a secret pregnancy is threatening her skating career. When she’s rushed to the hospital right before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, I panic. Now, my team’s loss lies solely on my shoulders and I could be traded.
When Eva needs help, suggesting we get married is the easiest split-second decision I’ve ever made. A grandchild could keep me in Boston playing for my family’s team, and I’d do anything to take care of Eva.
We agree to a marriage based on friendship, but once Eva and I are living together, all those artificial walls we’ve built start crumbling. Now, I’m making up for all the years I couldn’t call her mine.
But when her past reappears in our new life together, her happiness and my family’s reputation are both threatened. And maybe I’m not so different from my family after all, because I find there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my wife safe and happy.
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EXCERPT:
“So even though you’re objectively attractive,” I say, toying with my ring and hating every word about to leave my mouth, “we’re never going there.”
He nods in agreement. “There are few things that would ruin a friendship faster.”
“Exactly. Which is why we can’t kiss like that again, unless absolutely necessary.”
He lifts an eyebrow, and his lips quirk up on one side. “Define absolutely necessary.”
“Are you suggesting . . .” My eyes narrow as I try to figure out if he’s teasing me, or if he really needs the clarification.
“That we should put some boundaries in place so I don’t make you uncomfortable again? Yes.”
I want to explain that what made me uncomfortable wasn’t the kiss itself. It was how badly I wanted it to be real. But I can’t tell him that because I’m not sure I could handle the we’re-just-friends-and-this-is-just-an-act conversation. I am perfectly capable of reminding myself of this fact.
“Unless there are other people around and we need to convince them that this marriage is real, I think we need to keep our hands off each other.”
He tilts his head to the right as he studies me, and eventually his gaze is too much. Looking at Luke Hartmann is like staring at the sun—beautiful and blinding at the same time. If I don’t look away, I’ll get hurt.
“I guess what I’m trying to figure out,” he says, his voice quiet in the cabin of this small private jet, “is if the way I normally touch you, as a friend, is off limits now? And if so, what changed?”
Alarm bells are going off in my head. I’ve never read too much into or made a big deal out of the way he’s always touched me. It’s just how he is. It would be weird if I suddenly had a problem with it. It would raise questions, like the ones he’s asking right now: what changed?
What changed is that he just kissed me like no one else ever has. Like he wanted to take his time and savor me. Like he wanted more, but didn’t want to rush things. He kissed me like he cared, like it was a promise of forever.
And that’s the kind of thing that could make a girl hope, when she absolutely shouldn’t.
“Of course that’s fine, Luke,” I say with an exaggerated sigh. “Nothing’s changed. We’re still the same friends we’ve always been.”
Goal Line by Julia Connors
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The power that Julia Connors wields with her pen is pure wizardry. Every single book that I have read by her has been grantastically grand, believe it, in one way or another or all the ways! I honestly wish she had a backlist of a hundred books for me to look forward to as I await her next Great Novel. She is incredibly talented and I am so lucky that I bumped into her work last year (2024) because she has yet to let me down in any capacity. Her storylines are incredibly heartfelt and thought out and she has yet, in my experience with her work, missed a single step. That’s just so rare and as a lover of romance fiction, it makes my heart very happy!
Goal Line followed the incredible ease that all the stories in this series have had. It’s amazing to me how a story that is riddled with landmines can be so expertly unfolded without a single landmine exploding in epic disaster. Was there conflict in Evie & Luke’s journey? Um…yeah!! lol It just was dealt with a sense of “adulting” that allows the reader to sink into the story and never really get twitchy. GOD, I love this woman so much! This best of friends since childhood to more has to be one of the best stories I have read of its kind in a while! I was so content that it’s ridiculous! LOL But also, the story had surprises in it so it wasn’t predictable, just natural. If that makes sense.
One other thing that Julia always delivers is big family or friends or both energy as part of her stories and those are the absolute best kind of romances, I love to get lost in. She also delivers “growth” on all fronts. Her characters grow along with the story and that is so important for me to be able to believe in them. Reading Evie & Luke grow as individuals, as friends, and as a couple made my heart soar and made me believe in their love tenfold. I cannot wait for the audiobook of this story to be available because I know Julia is going to cast a team that will elevate this story as she has in the past to the point that my poor little heart might burst! I love this team and the family they have created both as teammates and as friends! This is a story and series I can easily see myself re-experiencing over and over in the years to come! <3
MEET THE AUTHOR:
I grew up in warm and sunny California, but my first decision as an adult was to trade my flip-flops for snow boots and move to Boston. I’ve been enjoying everything that New England has to offer for over two decades, and now that I’m acclimated to the snowy winters and have finally found all the places to get good sushi and tacos, I have zero regrets.
I live in the Boston-area with my husband and two daughters. I spend way too much time in front of my computer, weaving words into stories or wasting entirely too much time on social media.
But when I stop writing, I’m most likely to be found outdoors, preferably with a pair of skis or snowshoes strapped to my feet in winter or on a paddleboard in the summer.
Find out more ⇒ https://linktr.ee/juliaconnorsauthor
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