Review: Play by Play is played out by the end
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 09 24, 2013
I wish I could review this book from Jake's POV only because I loved his blog posts. I thought they were funny, honest, and entertaining. I liked the character behind the posts. As readers, we meet him through his blog, but we get to know him in the way he responds to his readers' posts. He would be an easy character to hate because he's lying to a woman about who he really is, but he tells us why and he kind of has a good reason, which is that she's anti-sports fans and he's a sports blogger whose been publicly blogging about her on his sports blog. That's like throwing an interception in your own end zone. BAD BAD BAD. But at the same time that he's digging his own grave, he's kind of charming too.Unfortunately, Jake's blogs weren't the only POV and that is where the story starting going down hill for me. Elevator Girl, while fun on the blog, came off as flat in the pages about her. When I read her third person POV, I felt like someone was reciting a bunch of text at me. She seemed completely detached from the story, and I found myself wondering if she would seem real to me if we got her side in first person point of view. I didn't understand her character. One minute, she's rejecting her elevator stalker and the next she's practically mauling him in her condo. What changed for her? Was it a few jogs in the park? And what is her deal with sports? How can you hate guys who like sports, but not hate sports too? I needed a little more insight into her character, which I felt was generic and underdeveloped.I found myself wishing the whole story was just Jake's blog posts because they were the best part of it, and I found myself skimming the text to get to the next blog post.  While I think the idea for the story was cute, the execution needed improvement.