Winning the Player by Leesa Bow
Published by Destiny Romance on 14 April 2014
Reviewed by Kj
The Word: Missed the 'Mark' (yes thats a footy term) in punching through as a winner in the New Adult romance genre
http://birdslovewords.com/review-winning-the-player-by-leesa-bow/

I went through a week of reading new adult romance and this is one of the books I picked up – hey it was that or a drink a lot of wine – I choose romance! Set in Australia and about Footy how could I resist! My life is overtaken during Footy season – our weekends are planned around when our AFL team is playing so I was rather excited to see how this story was going to pan out. The story, unfortunatly, just wasn’t anything special.

Aubree – was rather annoying as a female lead and I didn’t really relate to her much. Once an up and coming basketball star, she is now lost and washed up after an accident on the court ended her promising future. Travelling the world for the past few years trying to forget that her dreams were crushed she arrives home to try and pick her life back up. She spends a lot of the book trying to discover what she wants out of life and in my opinion wallowing – I don’t relate well with those that don’t choose to fight, especially when she reveals that she potentially could have made it in the basketball world if she worked her butt off in physio to try and repair her broken body. She takes the easy way out runs away and gives up. I get it, life is tough, I just can’t relate because I would have made different decisions.

Insert perfectly lovely and protective guy Hunter. There was a real discourse between what Aubree was thinking of Hunter and Hunter’s actions. For whatever reason Aubree lumped Hunter into the category of inconsiderate, mean and arrogant jock, when his actions, especially at the beginning of the book said anything but this. He was considerate, looked out for her welfare and spent time attention on Aubree to make her feel comfortable around him. He does have a bit of a temper that doesn’t appear until halfway through the book – guess there had to be a reason things couldn’t be perfect. But in general he is supportive and pushed Aubree to get out her funk – which she doesn’t always want to hear. I actually really disliked that Aubree thought he was a bit cocky and inconsiderate and wanted to shake her to open her eyes and see the truth of the situation.

The book is set around Aussie football – AFL, which was nice. Having a husband who is obsessed with the game our weekends are often scheduled around when his team is playing on the tele. In Australia we reference following the footy as a religion, and it can be. It was nice that the importance of the game was reflected in the book. It is not just a game – it is the atmosphere and community build around the game that makes it special. Leesa tries to keep things fairly simple so even if you don’t know a thing about the game it would make sense.

The book had notes of Cora Carmack’s All Lines Up, but just didn’t manage to punch through to that level. I enjoyed the read, but I don’t think I’ll add it to my reread pile.

Love you long time. ( )