Review: "The Game of Love was a heartwarming romance"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 30, 2011
Retired professional football player, Brett Wallace, has been burned in the past by a gold digging wife! Coaching high school football in his home town with his family nearby, he seems pretty content, until his gaze alighted upon, Chris St. James, the new girls' tennis coach. Chris seems completely indifferent to his former life and this intrigues Brett more than he wants to admit, but he can't fight the pull that she holds on him. Can he open himself up to the possibility of more hurt or will this be a healing relationship?Christina St. James has dumped her limelight-seeking, hockey-playing boyfriend and ditched her career to nowhere in favor of teaching math and coaching tennis to high school students all for the love of the game. The very last thing she wants to do is to get involved with a man whose ego is bigger than his heart. But Brett proves to be persistent, and she has no resistance to prevent him from breaking down her barriers. Can she keep him from acquiring her heart though?The Game of Love was a truly engaging romance with incredibly likeable, but flawed characters. Both Brett and Chris acted like morons when they felt that initial attraction between them and it just made the story more interesting. In the end, Brett was a little more open than Chris, but he could have asked her more things as well and not allowed her to keep quiet about her history. Since Brett didn't ask and Chris didn't volunteer, the past came back to bite them both in the behinds!The Game of Love had this big, macho, ex-football player landing on his rear a couple of times, and I have to admit that was amusing. He deserved it both times as he came across as completely arrogant to Chris even when he was trying to ferret out information from her. Brett and Chris were both a bit immature a few times, but Brett really does know how to be a grown-up and apologize correctly. He grew on me by the end of The Game of Love.I enjoyed how Brett and Chris reached a compromise in The Game of Love for the benefit of the kids, proving that, when needed, there really was an adult within each of them. I was a bit put off when Brett turned into a buffoon later on in The Game of Love. Oh, I understood why he would, but I think he owed it to Chris to ask more questions instead of protecting his pride so quickly. I forgave him readily enough though, as did Chris. He did so many nice, sweet things for Chris and the tennis squad and he didn't have to do them at all! However, given Chris' tumultuous relationship with her parents, I couldn't understand why she would give her mother a key to her house. It didn't make sense to me.The Game of Love was a heartwarming romance, and I was happy to see these two characters work past their issues to obtain their HEA.VanessaFor Joyfully Reviewed