Review: A cute and steamy Sports Romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 28, 2013
I have never read any other books by Jackie Barbosa, but I am a sucker for a good Sports Romance. When I saw that the hero of the book is a sexy football player, you better believe I was all over that. (What? Don't judge me! We all have our weakness.)The story itself was cute. It was well written, and had a good flow. I really enjoyed the characters, but it was still missing a little something for me to make it a more memorable read.The story itself would have been typical, had it not been for an interesting twist to your usual heroine that you might find in a book like this.Angela "Angie" Petersen was the shy, awkward, ugly duckling growing up. She and Cade went to the same high school and were friends. Of course Cade was the popular school quarterback that all the girls wanted, Angela included. Angela is now, of course, a knock-out. (pretty 'been there, read that' so far, right?)When Cade comes back to Harper Falls after an injury he suffered during one of his games takes him out of pro-ball for a while, he does so as a favor for his old high school football coach so he can take over as the interim head coach of the football team.Of course when Cade sees the now bombshell Angela, sparks fly.Now here is the twist that I really enjoyed. Angela, is actually one of the assistant coaches of the football team. I loved that she knew the game so well, even better than some of the male coaches. There was a lot of sports jargon and terms, so fans of the sport would definitely enjoy that. I'll admit to admiring the...uhem...tight ends...in the game, more so than the actual technicalities of the game itself (what, I'm honest OK!), so I was a little bit lost on some of the terminology. But I did enjoy reading and learning more about it.So when Angela finds out that Cade is threatening her position as a coach, a competition forms between them, laden in sexual tension, of course.I liked that this was not a case of insta-love, though I did think that the whole "I love you" business came a little too fast. But that might have been just my own preference at work here.I can't say that I loved the book, but I did enjoy it. I suppose in the end it was just missing that something extra, a certain oomph to make this a 5 star book for me. It was cute, with a happy HEA and quite steamy. It seemed to have a set-up in the end for a certain 2 characters that were introduced in this story, so I believe the author has plans to make this into a series.So I'll go with 3.5 stars.**Arc provided by Engangled Brazen via Netgalley for an honest review**