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Cherry Picking: a hockey player x gravedigger romance

by Ki Stephens

A romance shaped by grief, duty, and hockey

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A romance shaped by grief, duty, and hockey

Briggs Maxwell’s contract-year uncertainty is interrupted by the death of his estranged younger brother, bringing him back to Las Vegas and into the orbit of Evie Sutton, who works at her father’s funeral home. When Briggs must return to the season and leave his father, who is recovering from a stroke, behind, Evie agrees to help care for him. Their five-month arrangement gives the romance a practical starting point, while the description frames its deeper tensions around grief, family responsibility, and the difficulty of asking others to stay. Hockey and funeral-home work place the characters in sharply different worlds, linked by loss and the question of what it means to matter to someone.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Romance readers interested in a sports setting and a hockey-player pairing.
  • Readers drawn to stories involving bereavement, family care, and emotional vulnerability.
  • Those interested in romance between characters whose work and circumstances bring them into an unusual arrangement.

Themes

Romance and hockeyGrief and bereavementFamily responsibility and caregivingBelonging and being valued

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Some people you bury.

Some people you keep.

 

Briggs Maxwell is the hockey player teams like to put in front of a camera. He's fast, he's easy to like, and he makes a struggling franchise look better than it is. But it's a contract year, the Charlotte Kings are on the wrong side of the playoff line, and he's starting to suspect he'll spend a whole career being useful without ever being necessary.

Then his little brother dies, and Briggs flies home to Vegas to bury a man he hadn't spoken to in two years.

Evie Sutton has buried half her town and most of her feelings. She's a fine arts graduate who digs graves for her father's funeral home, and she knows how to handle grief like she handles a supply order-practically, and without flinching.

What she doesn't know how to handle is a famous hockey player who's just turned up at her funeral home.

When Briggs has to leave his stroke-recovering father behind for the rest of the season, it's Evie who agrees to help them out. It's supposed to be a simple arrangement. Five months, a paycheck, and two thousand miles of distance to keep it from becoming anything else.

But Briggs has spent his whole life leaving before anyone can ask him to stay, and Evie has never once asked anybody for anything. Which is fine, right up until it isn't.

A romance about the people we lose, the people we hold onto, and the terrifying business of being worth the trouble.

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Customer reviews

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AlbakiReads
Malaika Taylor

I highly recommend to for anyone looking for inner clarity

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Thomas DiMassa

Great service and fast service

Great shopping experience! The book arrived quickly, was well packaged, and matched the description perfectly. I would definitely shop with you again

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Olivia

Smooth.