Series: Kings of Rittenhouse #2
Genre: New Adult/Sports Romance
~Blurb~
An irresistibly steamy college sports romance.
I’m Heath Taylor.
Laid back. Easy going. Fastest guy on two skates and chill to a fault. Until Kara.
Laid back. Easy going. Fastest guy on two skates and chill to a fault. Until Kara.
Three nights together and I’m done for. Her laugh, her smile, the way my hand curves around her waist. She’s the one. Not a doubt in my mind...until I walk into my last class of the semester.
Kara, the woman of my dreams, is my new instructor. My hockey season and her career prospects are on the line. One false move--if anyone finds out--we’re both sunk.
On the ice I’m a beast that can’t be stopped, but thoughts of her are throwing me off my game.
My fingers itch to feel her in my arms again. But risking everything could ruin what we’ve worked so hard for.
My fingers itch to feel her in my arms again. But risking everything could ruin what we’ve worked so hard for.
Sometimes life has a way of changing the best laid plans. And sometimes you can’t stay away no matter the promises you make.
Life doesn’t play fair, but neither do I…
~Book Review~
3.5 Stars
This is really hard to rate. But since there were things I liked and things I didn’t enjoy, a middle of the road rating is probably most accurate. Starting with the positive….
The characters were likable, and I enjoyed them as a couple. I was intrigued with Heath from the previous book. Heath Taylor, 22, was a catch in this one too. He cooks, he knows his flowers, and his favorite movie is The Breakfast Club. This was off to a good start.
He was sexy:
“‘…that will make it that much hotter when I rip those pants off you, bend you over that desk and eat you out from behind when this session is over.’”
And so sweet:
“How was I supposed to go an entire semester without touching her? Without holding her and falling asleep in her arms? She’d already carved out a place in my heart…”
The guy knew how to woo on a date too. Too bad there wasn’t more time spent on that, and less spent on the story’s conflicts. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Kara Ellis, 23, was hardworking and smart, and I really enjoyed her approach to their initial “meeting.” She wasn’t self conscious about what she looked like naked; she wasn’t afraid to appreciate him naked; and this was quite refreshing in romanclandia where there are just too many blushing virgins. We need more heroines like Kara who can enjoy the experience for what it is and who have had some experience.
There was insta-love, but it wasn’t a big issue here because I could sense their connection. There was no OW drama—woohoo! This was looking good. So color me more than disappointed when the story dropped off in the second half.
For one, I think my patience with student-teacher scenarios is wearing thin, and this one felt contrived in that regard. On one hand I feel like if you’re really into a person, a few months of friendship wouldn’t hurt, nor should it be taboo. Again, the forbidden angle felt forced. Or the simple, mature solution would have been to notify the appropriate university personnel that you already know each other/are involved. No harm, no foul. Surely something could have been worked out if it was a university large enough to have graduate students teaching undergrad classes (not all colleges allow this in the first place). But the story’s eventual resolution turns out, perhaps, to be too convenient. I’m sure this school’s policy on credits was not the one on file during my college days.
I might have been able to shrug off most of that, along with a few errors I picked up along the way and some pacing awkwardness, but then came more angst and…well, personally I felt it went too far. I don’t like depressing twists in my romances, mostly because some of those things I’ve either lived through myself or known others who have. Like many others romance readers, I read romance to escape, and this one hit a personal trigger.
Told via Heath and Kara’s alternating first person POV, the first half is sweet and sexy, but the later half is drug down with angst. It just clouded the whole story with a sad feeling. This couple had a ton of potential, but their chemistry eventually became overshadowed by a plot that came to rely too much on angst and a twist that felt like cheap shock value rather than the development of a mature relationship. I also craved more of a sweeping epic epilogue to overcome so much of the depressing turn of events.
This is probably my last one in this series. I’m still not connecting with the rest of the series characters. In fact, in both books I found the references to them tiresome, their stories hinted at but their characters never fully dimensional. For different reasons, their premises are not appealing nor are they romantic to me.
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Maya Hughes has always loved romance novels. One look at her Kindle is confirmation. She started writing her first romance novel while pregnant with her third child and she hasn’t looked back. Now, her romance writing addiction has replaced her romance reading addiction.
You can find her writing on her foldable keyboard and phone anytime inspiration strikes. Her sweet and steamy stories range from rockstars to small towns and everything in between. When she’s not writing, she’s playing with her three kids, running errands or vegging on the couch with the love of her life and biggest fan, her husband.
~Giveaway~
