Review: Could have been, but wasn't
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 30, 2012
This book had the potential for a fun and interesting romantic read.  However, after starting with all the right ingredients, the final product just fell flat.  I can't even say that this book ended up being just ordinary because it actually bordered on bad rather than mediocre and ordinary.Ingredient 1: Jessica Brett is the daughter of a sports-mogul father and a past super-model mother, both of whom like to control Jessica's life.Ingredient 2: Dysfunctional family: not only are her parents controlling, they like to put their children down by telling them that everything that they have "achieved" is done through their connections.Ingredient 3: hunky hero with angst of his own.  Simon, The Boss, is a superb soccer player from a working-class background (sore issue) who may have to be put out to pasture now that his glory days are over.Simon moves to the U.S. where he plans on capitalizing on his star power that was built on being a bad boy, and not so much on being a good soccer player.  Problem: the owner of his new team expects him to play soccer instead of just selling seats through his star power.Ingredient 4: Evil bosses, back-stabbing friends, siblings.The main plot is about how Jessica ends up being Simon's personal assistant who is tasked to keep him out of trouble.  But Simon wants to build up his bad boy image, and after he starts to fall for Jessica, he thinks that she's a party girl who only likes the high life and so, even though his love for the soccer game and field draw him towards drawing back on the party scene, he thinks he needs to keep things interesting in order to keep Jessica interested in him.  As if that isn't confusing enough, Jessica learns that her new job was actually achieved through her father and she decides to get back at her father by using Simon.  How?  By getting Simon to live the kind of life that will guarantee his regular appearance in the tabloids.Basically, the problem with this book is that we have two main characters who both have some serious issues, especially with self-confidence and trust.  Their lack of trust makes them jump to conclusions.  And to bad decisions.  Simon isn't actually that bad.  He's actually a run-of-the-mill hero with nothing intersting to add.  However, the character of Jessica is a mess.  She really makes bad decisions and there were times when I had to take a break from the book because I just couldn't continue to read what she was doing.Would I recommend this to anyone? No, not even as a free read.Would I read this again? NoWas this worth the $2.99 paid: No.  This book should be sold for $0.99 to lessen the feeling of having paid too much for a mediocre book that reads as though it were written by an amateur.  Also, the formatting is off in this book.  I purchased this through Amazon and read it on a Kindle.  If you're going to publish a book for the Kindle, you should at least take the time to make sure the formatting is correct.  I had weird indentations and it wasn't for style or to show a time jump or someone's stream of consciousness.  it was just bad editing.