Review: Great characters, kept me turning pages.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 2, 2014
I'm a sucker for a good athlete story, and this book went above and beyond for me, throwing in broken and flawed characters I fell in love with right out the gate.WHAT I LIKED---------------- Exy. A fictional sport crafted more than well enough to be understood by the reader and inspire excitement for game scenes.- Pacing of backstory release. Sakavic hit my perfect balance of teasing out the backstory for the characters and releasing tidbits at a rate that kept me thirsting for more.- The characters. Everyone is broken, creating an entirely dysfunctional sports team. This book isn't about saving them, it's about survival - emotional and psychological more than physical.- The writing style. Sakavic doesn't waste words, much like her characters who have little use for superfluous conversation.- The overall cohesiveness of the tale. As a whole, I just really enjoyed this book.- Diversity of cast. The sport is co-ed, the team is captained by a woman, with two other women in key positions. One of the players is openly gay, but the book doesn't fall into any cliched "gay sports challenges" -- Nicky is a character not the "gay rights representative sports guy". A couple of the players are mixed race. I enjoyed reading a book where the main characters weren't all white and where the sport was truly co-ed.WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE------------------ Sakavic has one character with much less development than the others, making his storyline less impactful than it should have been.I highly recommend this story to anyone who enjoys dark sports narratives, flawed but surviving characters, and complex character relationships. NOTE: This is the first of 3 books, and the main narrative is told over the whole 3. If you go into the first book thinking you're going to get the whole tale, you'll be disappointed. Instead, know you are getting Neil's "Journey to belonging", and you'll finish satisfied and still wanting more.