WHAT’S INSIDE THE GUIDE

🏒 Discussion questions
🏒 Character breakdowns
🏒 Emotional themes & trope discussions
🏒 Playlist inspiration
🏒 Snack & drink pairings
🏒 Bonus book club activities
🏒 Hockey terminology for non-sports readers
🏒 Behind-the-book notes from Kristen
🏒 Emotional vulnerability & healing discussion prompts

PERFECT FOR READERS WHO LOVE…

❄️ Love after loss
❄️ Emotional vulnerability
❄️ High-stakes relationship tension
❄️ Deep emotional healing stories
❄️ Protective hockey heroes
❄️ Character-driven romance
❄️ Slow emotional trust-building
❄️ Found family dynamics
❄️ Grief and recovery themes
❄️ Romance with emotional depth over surface attraction

ABOUT THE BOOK

Low Blow is one of the most emotionally vulnerable stories in the Shots on Goal universe.

At its heart, this story is about grief, guilt, emotional survival, and learning how to let someone love you when you no longer recognize yourself.

This isn’t just a hockey romance about attraction.

It’s about fear.
About carrying loss so heavily it changes the way you move through the world.
And about discovering that healing is rarely clean, simple, or linear.

The emotional core of Low Blow explores what happens when two guarded people collide in the middle of emotional devastation and slowly begin rebuilding themselves together.

Within the Shots on Goal universe, this story helped deepen the emotional realism of the Otters world — showing that hockey romance can be both emotionally raw and deeply hopeful at the same time.

A NOTE FROM KRISTEN

Creating the Low Blow book club guide felt incredibly meaningful because this story carries some of the heaviest emotional themes in the Shots on Goal world.

This book explores grief, vulnerability, fear, and the terrifying risk of opening your heart again after loss — and seeing readers connect so deeply with that journey has meant more to me than I can properly put into words.

Thank you for spending time with these characters and for continuing to keep the Otters world alive.

— Kristen Hope Mazzola

READ NEXT

Loved Low Blow?

Continue your hockey romance binge with:

🏒 First Last Kiss
Fake dating tension, emotional vulnerability, and character-driven romance with complicated emotional history. (A deeply emotional return to the Otters world.)

🏒 Hat Trick
Forbidden love, slow burn tension, grief, healing, and emotional intimacy. (The story that started the entire Shots on Goal universe.)

🏒 Public Enemy #91
Fake dating chaos, forced proximity, PR disasters, and emotionally explosive hockey romance tension. (The next generation of emotional hockey chaos begins.)

READING WITH YOUR BOOK CLUB?

Tag your photos, annotations, snack spreads, and hockey romance chaos:

@khmazz

#ShotsOnGoal
#LowBlow
#KHMazz
#HockeyRomance

© 2026 Kristen Hope Mazzola. All rights reserved.