Review: Talking Dirty with the Player
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 11, 2014
TALKING DIRTY WITH THE PLAYER should've been I DONT TRUST YOU WOMANIZING RUGBY STAR. It started off promising and then floundered until the last fourth of the novel, which isn't saying much because that last fourth wasn't all that good either.Judith Ashton is a promising photographer commissioned (read: emotionally blackmailed, but use the term lightly) into shooting a "sexy" calendar for charity. The charity is a favorite of Caleb Steele's, who just happens to be a highly touted (and highly lusted after) New Zealand rugby player and the best friend of her older brother Joseph. Caleb was Judith's childhood crush, the only person who seemed to remember she existed, especially after her mother abandoned the family for reasons unknown. Caleb didn't have all that great of a childhood either: his mother died of cancer and his father was an alcoholic. He's got a distorted view of himself and Jude on a pedestal. He, of course, takes Jude's virginity only to decide that his career is taking off and so is he, which leaves her devastated. He goes on to become a celebrity due to his on and off the field prowess. When he enters back into her life--fresh off a trade between his old team in the UK and his new one in NZ--she's miffed and distant, but can she stay distant for long? There you have the premise.I say the novel starts of promisingly because as the reader, I felt the tension between Jude and Caleb from the first page. They meet up at a wedding and you can tell that there's something left unsaid between the two, but that tension is lost in bogged-down already charted romance backstory of two people with screwed up childhoods not thinking they're worthy. I'm all for it, I return to the genre like a bee to honey, but when it doesn't feel natural to the story or the progression of said story, it just becomes words on a page that my eyes skip over. It's the first I've read from the author and while it wasn't great, I'm interested to see what else she has. The writing flowed well and I didn't see too many glaring grammatical errors, so outside of the aforementioned, it was a decent read.