Elizabeth Reyes

In the fifth book in the 5th Street series, boxing heavyweight champion Felix Sanchez hits rock bottom when he loses his title due to drugs, alcohol, women, and his massive ego. After court-ordered probation, he returns home to the 5th Street Gym in LA where he got his start. He co-owns the gym with his four friends. Though he knows he needs to get his life straightened out, Felix doesn’t really care to until he meets the women’s self-defense instructor.
Ella Castellano started up the self-defense program after disaster struck her brother and his girlfriend. Though she’s secretly thrilled with Felix’s attention, she’s careful and doesn’t trust a man with his reputation.
Both the H/h are strong, well-developed, emotionally-damaged characters. They’ve experienced the loss of loved ones and bonded over their shared grief.
I really liked this book, but their ages surprised me. Ella is only 21 years old. Felix’s age is never mentioned, but you’re led to believe he’s about four or five years older than her. Even at age 26, I found it hard to believe he was that high up the boxing ladder, but then again, I don’t know anything about boxing. I wish the sport would’ve played a stronger role in the story, but Ms. Reyes focused more on the characters and their romance, with Felix’s boxing career in the background.
Even though the book is a standalone, I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if I’d read the previous books in this series. Felix’s friends—Noah, Gio, Hector, and Abel—were all there with their wives and children, but I couldn’t really connect with them. There were a lot of side characters, including friends and family members, and I couldn’t keep track of which woman was married to which man.
Ella’s ex, Grayson, grated on my nerves. I understand why she wanted to stay friends with him—he really did care about her—but he was manipulative and controlling. He treated her and Felix horribly, always trying to break them up, but she continued to forgive him because he was “worried” for her. I lost all respect for her when she refused to cut ties with Grayson after a certain embarrassing incident that plastered her face all over the media.
The story could use an edit to fix some punctuation errors/typos and repetition, but I still enjoyed it. For anyone who wants to read a NA sports romance that’s not too heavy on sports, this is a good book to try.
4 Stars
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3.75/5

Can I have a Moreno brother please?

I’m sure the book won’t appeal to everyone as it’s mainly centered about a teenage romance and not much serious or mysterious going on through the whole story.

Sarah just moved out to San Diego California with her aunt and her step daughter Valerie due to her mother being in jail. She promised herself and her best friend that she won’t stay long, just a semester and she’ll be heading back even if her mother forbid her to do it and insisted that she must stay until things got better for her.

So we have the new girl in school who by *chance* meets the hottest boy in school and probably in the whole town: Angel Moreno (well his brothers are too), they fall head-over-heels in love and find themselves enrolled in one intense relationship. There’s a lot of affection flooding, from kissing to touching to very cheesy, corny, romantic moments that sometimes made me go “awww”, then to the first sexual experience…

Their couple issues weren’t very grave: Angel is an über caveman male who couldn’t, at first, handle well the seriousness of their relationship, he couldn’t let her go or bear the thought of her away from him and his out-of-control jealousy and lust towards her were new to him. While he poured his heart to her, Sarah kept a secret or two from him about her best friend Sydney and she felt that the longest she hid the truth from him the harder it became to tell him, every time delaying it until it exploded right unto her face.

By now, you’ll think that I didn’t like it much but I did. I don’t know the exact reason behind it: maybe I needed something fluffy and light after the huge emotions that “If I Stay” inflected upon me, or maybe all the Latino hot-blooded cast of boys starring in the book…

Like Angel, all the Moreno Brothers are overprotective, intense, caring, hot and can’t keep their hands off of their women. My favorite though is Alex, a college football player who helps his family with their Mexican restaurant. He’s sassy, brazen, passionate and known to be a women-man. I loved his interaction with Valerie who seemed to affect him more than he wanted to admit it to himself; they were blazing the pages and the complexity of their liaison appealed to me more than the sweet first-love thing of Sarah and Angel. I’m sure the next book is about them and I, without a shadow of a doubt, will be checking it out!
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