Offside
Avery Keelan's 2022 self-published romance is set on the campus of fictional Lakeside University and follows Hadley, a serious student who has sworn off hockey players after a bad freshman-year breakup, and Adam Donnelly, the cocky team captain who keeps turning up in her tutoring sessions and at every party she attends. Keelan writes in alternating first person and leans on the campus rivalry, fake-dating, and best-friend's-brother tropes that have made her TikTok-famous in the new adult sports romance lane. The book balances on-page steam with a slow build of trust as both leads work through the family expectations and the past relationships that have made them wary of anything serious, and the book sets up the wider Lakeside U series that continues in Faceoff and Onside. Readers who came up on Elle Kennedy or Hannah Grace will recognize the rhythm and find Keelan's voice a fresh, funny addition.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Offside
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Sienna, a serious business student, agrees to fake-date the college's hockey captain in exchange for tuition help. The deal is supposed to be transactional. The two of them keep crossing the lines they wrote into the contract.
Yes. Offside is an explicit hockey romance, around 4 to 5 out of 5 on the spice scale. Avery Keelan writes new adult sports romances with significant on-page steam.
Yes. Offside is an explicit hockey romance, around 4 to 5 out of 5 on the spice scale. Avery Keelan writes new adult sports romances with significant on-page steam.
Yes. Offside is part of Avery Keelan's UCLA Lakers / hockey-romance interconnected universe. Each book features a different couple in the same college sports world.
Offside was written by Avery Keelan, published in 2022 by Avery keelan.
Offside is 563 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Offside takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
Offside is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.