66 pages • 2 hours read
Hannah GraceIcebreaker
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Gender-Based Power Dynamics
Traditionally, romance novels feature dominant, successful men as the romantic interest for the protagonist. Sometimes the protagonist is herself a confident and successful career woman, and sometimes she is less fortunate and timid. Nathan and Anastasia fit into this mold, with Anastasia oscillating between the two kinds of romance heroine at different points of the novel. In other words, Nathan and Anastasia fulfill the gender roles typically displayed in romance novels of this type. He is a provider; he has the house and lets his friends live there, paying for their parties and driving them around. He is wealthy, and Anastasia ensures her own financial security by marrying him. He is also a protector; he takes care of his teammates, punches Aaron when he kisses Anastasia against her will, and saves Anastasia from drowning in the frozen lake. Despite her obvious exceptionalism, Anastasia is neurotic and is often a victim of her feelings, needing therapy and lacking self-esteem. Throughout the novel, she needs a fair bit of rescuing; for example, she needs to be saved repeatedly from falls on the ice, from drowning, and especially from Aaron.
Because Icebreaker is a romance novel, this gendered power dynamic is essential to how the romance between the protagonists unfolds. At the start of the novel, Anastasia is bossy and cold. She controls her relationship with Ryan, telling him when she will see him. Her relationship with Nathan begins the same way; she makes him earn time with her through little challenges, and he lets her. As an athlete, she is a competitive person, and their sexual chemistry is first based on these challenges. They insult each other playfully and turn sex into battles over who will submit first. They take turns being the more dominant person in the bedroom, but soon Nathan asserts his dominance. In the second half of the novel, all of the sex scenes feature Nathan’s dominance and Anastasia’s submission: a significant change in dynamics. During such intimate moments, he makes her tell him that she belongs to him. He is also rough with her, spanking her and calling her a “good girl.” This behavior extends beyond the bedroom as well and can be seen whenever Nathan tells Anastasia to shut up and sit down. Far from being indignant at such treatment, Anastasia likes this about Nathan just as Lola appreciates Robbie’s “dominant personality” (256). Thus, the novel not only uses conventional gender roles, but it also exaggerates them and turns performances of male dominance and female submission into erotica.
Most importantly, however, this dominant behavior does not prevent Nathan from being a safe person for Anastasia to rely upon. Because he is gentle and clearly cares for her, Anastasia is free to put aside the version of herself that stands equal with Nathan. She can allow herself to engage in sexual fantasies based on outdated power dynamics, because the essence of their relationship is built upon mutual love and respect. Thus, the bedroom paradoxically allows her to step outside of traditional gender roles while also exploiting them to her advantage.
Found Family
Both Anastasia and Nathan have personal issues with their families. Anastasia struggles with the fear that her adoptive parents will stop loving her if she fails in her skating career, which becomes highlighted by Aaron’s comment that she is unlovable and valued by her parents only for their trophy cabinet. Nathan’s childhood was only happy when his mother was alive, and he avoids his father, who wants him to return to Colorado and rejects his hockey career. Many of the characters in Icebreaker are defined by their relationships with their families; Aaron’s issues are blamed on his awful parents, Coach Faulkner is protective of his family time, and Russ is in a precarious position because of a bad home life. However, although many of the novel’s conflicts arise from family dynamics, family can also provide key solutions, as Anastasia’s repaired relationship with her parents helps to alleviate her chronic anxiety. Similarly, Nathan finds satisfaction with surrogate father figures in Mr. Hamlet and Colin Allen.
However, not everyone is able to repair their family relationships. Instead, many of the characters move away from their families of origin and gravitate toward chosen families in Maple Hills. For example, the hockey team becomes a family for many of the guys, and Lola and Anastasia become Aaron’s family to such an extent that he goes too far to keep it together and ultimately loses those connections. However, the most obvious “found family” revolves around Nathan’s house in Maple Hills. By the end of the novel, this family includes Nathan, Robbie, Henry, JJ, Lola, and Anastasia, and even Russ will be moving in after Nathan leaves. Before the trip to Seattle, living at Nathan’s house helps to repair Anastasia’s fears that she is unworthy of love. The guys clearly care for her and, she admits, “There’s a warm, full feeling in my heart when I’m around this team” (273). She has real feelings of non-romantic love for Henry, and vice versa. She also becomes something of a mother figure to the guys, with Nathan as a father figure, and they often “play house” and deliberately act out scenes of domesticity. As the penultimate scene suggests, the feeling of family is strongest in the scenes in which Anastasia learns how to cook with Robbie or JJ, with the rest of the guys and Lola eating what they make. If not for the Epilogue, which focuses on Nathan’s and Anastasia’s biological family, the novel would end with the focus on everyone’s happiness with their found family, as Nathan watches Anastasia surrounded by their mutual friends.
The Importance of Honest Communication
Icebreaker is rare among romance novels because it lacks the somewhat contrived conflict of the third-act breakup that most stories tend to include. Usually, just as the two characters are about to settle into a happy, long-term relationship, the author introduces some kind of miscommunication that causes the protagonists to believe that there is no hope for reconciliation. Inevitably, some bit of luck or a grand gesture will reveal the dramatic irony that one or both of the characters was actually mistaken, and the reconciliation ensues. While Hannah Grace’s novel does utilize miscommunication, it occurs on a much smaller scale and never truly jeopardizes the relationship in the way a typical third-act breakup tends to do. The various miscommunications that occur along the way actually serve to provide experiences that cause the protagonists to steadily improve their relationship as those miscommunications are overcome, one after another. First, Nathan lies to Anastasia about the ice rink prank to protect Russ, leading to Anastasia not trusting him for weeks. Then Nathan publicly confesses to hurting Aaron (confirming Aaron’s false accusation) in order to protect his team, leading to Anastasia not speaking to him for two weeks and feeling like their relationship is ending just as she starts to have feelings for him. The latter case is similar to a typical third-act breakup; their separation ends when Nathan makes the grand gesture of forcing his way to her apartment after learning that she was injured on the ice. However, their reconciliation takes place early in the novel, and it relies more on a therapy session between Anastasia and Dr. Andrews in which Dr. Andrews advises Anastasia to communicate her feelings.
Because of Anastasia’s dedication to therapy, Anastasia and Nathan are always able to solve their relationship problems through honest communication. They each worry about when to confess their love, but neither waits too long. In fact, Nathan considers Anastasia’s ability to communicate her feelings to be one of the things he loves about her. When Anastasia moves back in with Aaron, she is explicit about her reasons for doing so, and Nathan has no reason to disbelieve her. When Nathan does struggle with jealousy and worries too much about Aaron, he hurts her with his words; he snaps at her in frustration, accusing her of being gullible. But even this doesn’t last long, because Nathan is able to process his feelings with the help of his roommates, and Anastasia recognizes that Nathan does not have her experience in therapy. They never break up, and by their next date night, Nathan is ready to apologize and let Anastasia deal with Aaron on her own. Through earnest and honest conversations, he realizes that his anger stems from an impulse to be the only person she relies upon, which is not fair to her. In this way, Grace subverts the romance trope of the third-act breakup by allowing her characters to move past their vows of commitment to each other and develop a strong relationship that proves itself equal to surviving any miscommunications that happen to arise.
