"Fox draws readers into her story with simple prose and vivid imagery, offering a contained space for readers to ease into her narrators' shoes and recognize the familiar in the world reflected around them. Her prose reads like a peek into the quiet monologues of lives happening around you." --Megan McCarter, Midwest Book Review

"The titular ice of Wendy J. Fox's intricate, richly drawn novel lies beneath a teenage boy who would have become a father. When he falls through, his 14-year-old girlfriend is still pregnant, and because of her age, she lets the boy's sister raise the child as if she were her own. A story of secrets and choices, Fox eschews conventional revelations to explore deeper connections. Sarah Mollo-Christensen narrates the audiobook with warmth and patience. Her voice work is minimal, a welcome approach for a novel with so many characters. Fox's generosity to her characters echoes in Mollo-Christensen's even narration. The daughter at the novel's center is Melanie, an executive who laments the way she "spent so much of life with people picked by a hiring committee." She fills the void, or tries to, with business-trip hook-ups, one of whom refuses to take one-night stand for an answer. If the Ice Had Held pans to a wide cast of point-of-view characters, but Melanie anchors the narrative, and her humor evokes Maria Semple at her satirical best. "My children are four and six." "Oh, those are such fun ages," Melanie said, which is what she usually said about people's children, no matter how old they were. The novel's nuanced, panoramic structure also benefits from the audiobook's less-is-more approach. Mollo-Christensen lets Fox's prose and characterization do the heavy lifting, and when the novel's pieces snap into place in the final chapters, the understatement, by author and narrator, carry the weight of what hasn't been said."--James Tate Hill, LitHub

"Wendy J. Fox's novel If the Ice Had Held tells the story of the cold and lonely landscape of the Mile High City, with honesty and tenderness, from one woman's perspective. It's a book about harbored secrets and shared discovery, told in lyric style." --Teague Bohlen, WestWord

"Fox uses concise, exquisitely worded descriptions to create a compelling story comprised of numerous layers and multiple unique voices. The atonal discord of Fox's characters in If the Ice had Held is astonishingly melodic and seductive." --Lisa Morrow, Laurel Review