Review: Fabulous mix of tennis and love!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2013
I have been looking forward to GAME. SET. MATCH. for a long time. I absolutely love tennis, so when I saw that this book would be set around the sport, I was instantly hooked and knew I had to read it. I was super excited to be chosen as part of the book blitz/blog tour, because I was so anxious to read the book that I didn't want to wait for its release. I am happy to report that everything I wanted this book to include - three strong female characters, three swoon-worthy boys, and lots and LOTS of tennis - was brought into existence by the author and I was pretty much instantly enamored with the story, characters and setting.This book is told via three alternating points of view. We have Penny, who is the established player (although still young herself), Jasmine, whose parents were tennis superstars, and Indy, whose mom just passed away. Out of the three, I think I connected the most with Indy, as her journey to OBX (which is the nickname for the tennis academy) seemed the most realistic. She has a lot to deal with throughout the book, and I just found her extremely sympathetic. However, I also had a fondness for Penny, mostly because of her scenes with her male counterpart, Alex. There was a lot of chemistry between the two of them, and I liked the way Penny had to navigate her feelings for him while still staying focused on her training. Really, though, all three girls were very strong characters, and each were developed in a way that the reader really comes to care about all three of them.Considering that this is labeled New Adult, I was very happy to see that some of the typical NA tropes weren't used. There's no sex, first of all; it's mentioned, but isn't explicitly written into the text. There's a bit of a bad boy - Alex - in this book, but you don't get the usual situations that seem to go hand in hand with a character of this sort. All of the romances were sweet, and the boys equally deserving of fanfare. My favorite overall relationship was Alex and Penny, simply because of the steps they had to take to get together, but I also really enjoyed Indy's journey to get together with her beau of choice. This is the relationship I'm most curious about, simply because there are some issues between the two of them that will have to be resolved.Considering that this is technically a tennis book, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the sport in this review. The tennis in this book is amazing. I was eating up all of the practice scenes, as well as the match play. I loved the look inside the girls' heads as they were competing; it's the mental aspect that I personally find so compelling in the matches I watch, so to get to experience that through this book was especially interesting to me personally. The tennis scenes were easily my favorites in the entire book.GAME. SET. MATCH. is an extremely well done debut novel. If you like sports, you should definitely pick it up, but even if you're uncertain about the tennis aspect, the girls and the romances should be enough of a draw to keep you engaged. I know that I, for one, shall be eagerly awaiting any future installments!~An e-galley was provided by the author for blog tour purposes.~