Review: Moral of this story—stay away from men like the males portrayed here!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 11, 2014
This novella is a prequel to the full length book Trapped.  We meet Mitch and Paige upon his return home to Georgia on summer break as Paige tells him she’s pregnant from his unexpected trip home during Spring Break.  Mitch is devastated; immediately thinking of how he’ll have to give up his football and leave his university in New York. The situation isn’t helped by his insensitive jerk of a best friend, Josh, who makes him question if Paige did this on purpose and if the baby is even his.  When Mitch hears Paige’s mom say she went off her birth control pills he morphs into complete and utter selfish deadbeat dad mode, walks out on Paige, and never comes back for the birth.  This sets up the follow up book of Trapped.Now here are the problems with this prequel. It only fills in the brief amount of time during Paige’s pregnancy and their reactions to it. We don’t get any kind of love story or romance to show what their relationship was like before the pregnancy. Had a different (softer) side of Mitch been shown, he might have been more bearable, but as it is, it’s hard to root for them to reunite (the premise of Trapped).It’s also hard to muster any sympathy for Mitch in regards to Paige’s mistake as it’s understandable how they got carried away. She had a lot of side effects with her pills, tried switching brands, and then finally stopped them in the months he was away when she didn’t need them. He showed up unplanned for one day of his Spring Break and she forgot to tell him in the midst of being surprised and happy to see him. Seeing as how he was so far away from her for so long I didn’t think it was unbelievable.What I couldn’t understand was that how if they have been high school sweethearts and together so long, he could have thought so little of her.  A girl he just met might have been understandable to have doubts about her intentions or responsibility in regards to birth control, but they’d been together for years.As a free prequel it’s meant to wet your appetite for the full story, but honestly the way Mitch acts is a turn off. And Josh supposedly gets his own book with Erin at some point—that boy needs to do women a favor and stay away from them with his lousy attitudes.If you are looking for an absent dad who redeems himself story, I’d recommend Love of a Rockstar before this series.