Review: I ended up loving The Game!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 14, 2013
The Game – Kirsten Backhard starts off with Kirsten telling her BFF about her relationship with Drew, one of her brother Derek’s best friends.I have to be honest, the first couple of pages had me wondering if I was going to continue on with the rest of the book.  We have Kirsten telling Liz about the demise of her relationship with Drew and then on to a bar scene.  Some of the dialogue had me texting my own best friend saying have we ever talked like this as 30-somethings?  Did we even talk like this in our 20’s with each other when we were a bit more crude and obnoxious?  Maybe back when we were 17 or 18 we had some friends who would talk like that, but we still wouldn’t have said those things.  We are definitely not prudes (if you follow my reviews, you know the kind of books I read) and have been known to have mouths like sailors in our lifetimes.  It was a little too much obnoxious crudeness for women that are living in the same decade as I am (30’s).What do you know though?  It pays to keep on going because I ended up loving the book.Why do I share that?  Because it is such a good book, if you opened it and felt as I did, and then did shut the book, you would miss out on an beautiful, sexy, sometimes heart wrenching love story.I seriously went from I don’t think I am going to be able to finish this to OMG I need the next book.That is honestly the only thing that really bothered me.Once I got into the story, got deeper into Kirsten’s fears, reasons for closing herself off, away from her friends who always had to be crude and obnoxious, like they were trying to show off for every guy in the room and into relationships with other characters, I was entranced.  I loved the character Drew.  I have to say I actually like most of the guy characters in the book over the females, minus one male role, they felt more mature than most of the ladies in The Game.  I even liked Kirsten a lot when she was away from most of the ladies, when she didn’t act like she needed to be showing off.  There were some very tender moments between her and best friend Liz that I adored.  There was one thing I hoped would happen that didn’t.  I was hoping that there would be some explanation as to why Liz and Kirsten had the relationship they did.  Why if you got one you got the pair.  Was there something tragic in one of their pasts that had them clinging to each other like they did?  I wanted to know more about their relationship.All in all, it was an excellent story once I got past my initial issue, well written, I was hooked after the first couple of scenes and I read it straight through.I received an ARC for an honest review.