Recently I finished Ashlyn McKayla Ohm’s When the Ice Melts, a powerful book that fits into the Contemporary Christian Fiction and Sisters Fiction genres. It came out last month and is definitely worth a read and the author is worth following.
The main character in this story is Addisyn Miles, an elite figure skater who’s in the midst of a career interruption on her path to the Olympics. After she and her sister, Avery, escaped from their abusive father, Addisyn threw herself into figure skating, finding new confidence and success.
The primary question in this book is how people recover from abusive relationships and other traumas. Avery’s approach is to withdraw into prayer in the mountains, which makes her a challenging character to follow as it takes about a hundred pages before she actually talks to someone who isn’t a dog. Addisyn’s approach is to get into a new abusive relationship with her figure-skating coach. And then there’s Darius, a caring guy who wants to honor his parents’ memory, but he has a hard time relating to others.
The book is an intriguing blend of romance elements and personal drama. A romance is over when the couple reconciles, but this book leaves you guessing, is the book going to be over when Addisyn figures out what to do about her sister, the thoughtful guy, the mean guy, her career, or God?
There are a few soft spots in the book – Darius’ backstory has some holes in it, leaving his current issues a little confusing. Also, given how cash-strapped most of the characters are, there are a surprising number of last-minute cross-country plane tickets purchased. And there’s one thing in the book’s promo blurb that drives me nuts – it says Addisyn escapes to the Canadian Rockies when she goes to Whistler. (It’s in the Coast Range, 500 miles to the west.)
But these are minor problems. All in all, it’s a good book, and you should look it up. One cautionary note about the title – if you type “When the Ice Melts” into Amazon, you want the one with the cover of a woman in the gray shirt carrying ice skates above a picture of the mountains. Don’t click on the “When the Ice Melts” cover with the woman wearing a red bra while holding ice skates. That one’s a non-fiction book about an elite figure skater who reaches a juncture in her career and takes an, um, different path.
