Mile High

Mile High has a better love story than its swaggering hero initially deserves, and that is precisely the fun.

Evan Zanders would like the whole world to believe that the penalty box is a personality. I gave him twenty pages before I wanted to ground him, which is awkward in a romance that keeps putting him on a plane. Liz Tomforde understands the appeal of an athlete who knows how to play the villain in public. She also knows that an act only becomes interesting when somebody refuses to clap.

Stevie did that work for me. She is not impressed by the performance, and her job makes it impossible simply to walk away from him. I had fun with their friction, but I liked the book most when it remembered that both people have lives beyond a string of sharp replies. The attraction gets louder. The more interesting thing is how gradually each becomes harder for the other to reduce to a role.

The premise (no spoilers past Stevie's first team flight)

Mile High, first published in 2022, opens the Windy City series in Chicago's professional hockey world. Zanders is the player who enjoys being the one fans love to hate. Stevie is a flight attendant newly assigned to his team's private plane. He sees her as an employee he can irritate; she sees an arrogant athlete and has already promised herself she will not date one again. Road trips keep bringing them into each other's space.

The book offers both of their perspectives, which is useful for a pair so determined to misunderstand the evidence in front of them. The premise does not need a complicated secret to work. It has a workplace boundary, a long season and two adults who are much more articulate about each other's defects than their own wishes. At least one of those adults has access to a call button. An instrument of romance, apparently.

What works

The plane is a clever pressure cooker. A hockey arena lets Zanders control the terms of attention: he can provoke, perform and leave. In Stevie's workplace, he has to be seen at close range by someone whose job is not to admire him. The physical confinement gives the banter a reason to recur, while the professional boundary gives it a cost. Forced proximity sometimes means two attractive people are stranded beside one bed. Here it means neither can dismiss the other as a one evening mistake.

Tomforde writes Zanders as a man who has become too good at his own publicity. The rough edges are not hidden; they are advertised. That creates a useful split between what he invites strangers to think and what Stevie learns by staying in the room. I liked the gradual exposure of care beneath the grandstanding. It works because she is allowed to find him aggravating for quite a while. His reputation is a shield, but a shield can also make a man remarkably difficult to hug.

Stevie's body image concerns give the romance another pressure point. The book is unusually attentive to the difference between being desired and being at ease in your own skin. Zanders cannot solve years of insecurity by complimenting her once, and Tomforde is more convincing when she lets his steadiness matter over time. Stevie has to remain the subject of her own experience, rather than a lesson a handsome athlete passes with a speech. Those passages gave the sweetness something firmer to stand on.

The alternating viewpoints also let the jokes travel in both directions. A sharp exchange is more satisfying when I can see the private bruise beneath each public line. Tomforde's best rhythm is a flare of provocation followed by the small, embarrassingly earnest thought neither person would say aloud. I was not immune. There are moments when even my scepticism put down its coat and stayed for another chapter.

What's polarising

The book is long, and you can feel the length. The attraction and the argument between Zanders and Stevie are established early; later stretches repeat the same emotional terms before either one changes them. I enjoy a slow courtship, but a slow courtship still needs a new kind of difficulty. Sometimes the novel circles back to the familiar insecurity so often that I wanted to hand both characters a calendar and ask them to pick a day for the conversation.

Zanders's opening behaviour may also be too much for readers who need an appealing hero from page one. Being rude to a woman doing her job is not seductive in itself. The book earns much of its later tenderness, but it asks you to tolerate the early act while it builds that case. I did, with annotations in the margin. They were not all kind.

And Tomforde's earnestness can become repetitive. The emotional reassurance is sincere, yet a few exchanges explain feelings that the scenes have already shown clearly. Trust the look across the cabin. Trust the decision to stay. When the novel does, it is warmer and quicker. When it adds another statement of what the moment means, the air gets a little thin.

The Zanders of it

Zanders is strongest as a character when the bad reputation stops being a romantic accessory and becomes an obstacle he helped build. Tomforde gives him a public role he knows how to inhabit and a private desire that role cannot accommodate. Stevie does not merely glimpse a secret nice man and absolve the visible one. Their relationship has to deal with both versions.

That is why the hockey setting matters even though the book's real game is off the ice. Zanders can take a penalty and call it strategy. He cannot do the same with trust. I liked watching him discover that attention is easy to command and difficult to deserve. The swagger got me in the door; the moments when it failed are what kept me there.

Spice and heat

Expect 4 of 5 heat, explicit open door. This is an adult sports romance with substantial on-page sexual content, not a closed door flirtation that happens to mention hockey. The physical pull is clear well before the couple has learnt to manage the feelings attached to it. If you want emotional restraint followed by a discreet fade, this will be more direct than you expect.

Content note: body shaming, fatphobia, abandonment and panic attacks are among the concerns readers have flagged. The body image material is woven into Stevie's arc, so consider whether you want that subject alongside the flirtation. Tomforde aims for reassurance; the repetition that helps some readers feel held may leave others feeling pressed on a bruise.

Who it's for

You like a loud athlete whose real challenge is being quiet enough to hear someone else. You want a working heroine with boundaries, a relationship that grows during travel, and high heat with a soft centre. You can tolerate a sprawling middle because you care more about emotional accumulation than speed. If you need a lean hockey romance, pack lighter. If you want to watch a man lose an argument with the woman holding the safety instructions, welcome aboard.

Books like Mile High

• The Right Move by Liz Tomforde: stay in the Windy City for another athlete whose public reserve hides a messier private longing.
• The Fake Out by Stephanie Archer: hockey, professional proximity and sharper comic pace, with a fake relationship doing the work of the aircraft cabin.
• Always Only You by Chloe Liese: a gentler hockey romance where workplace boundaries and being truly seen matter more than a notorious reputation.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Zanders is waiting on Fictora.

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