Review: My kind of story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 16, 2013
I am a sucker for athletes. I absolutely love reading sports themed romance novels. Why? Because athletes are the warriors of our time, they are fierce competitors and straight up alpha males. Now throw in a good love story and I am all in. I really enjoyed reading Down by Contact, actually I stayed up until all night reading it. It was sweet and real. Ironically I started reading it last night, once I realized my beloved Boston Celtics were done for the season, and their quest for the NBA championship was over.I really enjoyed Down by Contact, it kept me engaged all the way through the end. I like the idea of the story, Zach Murphy has just been traded to the Seattle Lumberjacks a two-time Super Bowl winning team. Zach is at the end of his career and knows that his time in the league is almost over and he wants to go out on top with a championship. Kelsie Carrington-Richmond, is the rich beauty queen slash mean girl who Zach, the poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks, crushed on all through high school and who broke his heart in true mean girl fashion.In a twist of fate, Kelsie and Zach are reunited years later, but their circumstances are reversed. Kelsie is no longer rich, spoiled or a beauty queen. She is broke and about to hit rock bottom. Hoping to rekindle their friendship, Kelsie seeks out Zach to help her jump start her finishing school with contacts he may have through the league. However, Zach now a successful wealthy professional athlete is not as forgiving as the young boy he once was. He is focused on winning a championship, and he refuses to let Kelsie and her issues distract him from his purpose. Zach and Kelsie had damaged childhoods, as well as immense trust issues. Both had been beat down by the circumstances in their lives and neither was willing to believe they were worthy of the other. And here is where I had my issue with the book. The "woe is me...she broke my heart as a teenager/my ex-husband emotionally abused me, so I can't involve my emotions" got old about half-way through the book. If the "woe is me" and other emotional baggage were cut in half, Down by Contact would have been a five tubs novel.Down by Contact is book 3 of 5 in the Seattle Lumberjacks series, it could be read as a stand-alone but I would have preferred to have read the two before it, since the characters in the first two books were prominent secondary characters. All in all, it wasn't a bad read, some of the conflict between Zach and Kelsie were just a little over done. I recently ordered books 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the series, I think once I  get the full impact of the stories I will appreciate book 3 a little better.