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A review by haletostilinski1
Love Match by Keira Andrews
4.0
⭐︎3.5 stars rounded up!⭐︎
This author, who I absolutely adore, shows a good, solid first (or one of the first) book written and released.
Released in 2006, it shows just how different things were even in 2006. I don't fault the book at all for how closeted Luke is for the majority of this, because yeah, there really isn't one out male professional tennis player as of today. At least their are other out players in some other major league sports. It's still slow going, though.
Luke's extreme caution and fear of being outed felt very realistic. So did Jesse being the younger one, a little less closeted and afraid to come out. 11 years Luke's junior, even with what he's been through, he doesn't want to stay closeted for long.
I think my problems with this book how long Luke maintained his "stay very closeted" stance, and caring what everyone thought of him, and then just at the very end getting over all that baggage and being ready to be out to the world, and in such a public way. It was great and very Hollywood movie-esque, but I wish the change from his extreme closeted-ness had been handled a little more smoothly and gradually.
I do also think the chemistry between these two was just okay. We got scenes with them aplenty, but I still didn't feel like we were getting enough, which to me means I wasn't getting enough in their scenes together, chemistry wise. This book would have greatly benefited from Jesse's POV. I really like the trend that most romance books do now of doing both POV's. One POV just takes a lot to make work in a romance.
While I liked these two, especially near the end, it was slow going for me on feeling much between these two, and by the end they were just likable. I didn't love them.
This slightly less than 200 page book took me a bit to finish, which says something. It didn't have enough really interesting scene until near the end, which made me round up instead of down on this, because I did gain back some interest near the end with the coming out drama.
So overall, this gets a solid 3.5 stars, it showed the potential of this author really well, there were just obvious kinks to work out that, having read this author's later works, she did work out later on.
She said in the AN at the beginning that she revisited this last year and she felt she didn't have to make extensive edits and for the time, it can stand as is, and for the most part I agree - it felt very realistic, how horribly some people reacted when things started to come out - but I do think some things, like the transition from looking going extremely closeted to out could have been included, and maybe including at least a few Jesse POV scenes. I think that would have greatly improved this.
So as is, it was entertaining for the most part overall, it just needed more to really bring this home as a great one. Glad I read this oldie - it served to remind me how different things were just 16 years ago. Oh how time flies. I was just starting my freshman year in high school when this came out haha. Wild.
Onto the next!
This author, who I absolutely adore, shows a good, solid first (or one of the first) book written and released.
Released in 2006, it shows just how different things were even in 2006. I don't fault the book at all for how closeted Luke is for the majority of this, because yeah, there really isn't one out male professional tennis player as of today. At least their are other out players in some other major league sports. It's still slow going, though.
Luke's extreme caution and fear of being outed felt very realistic. So did Jesse being the younger one, a little less closeted and afraid to come out. 11 years Luke's junior, even with what he's been through, he doesn't want to stay closeted for long.
I think my problems with this book how long Luke maintained his "stay very closeted" stance, and caring what everyone thought of him, and then just at the very end getting over all that baggage and being ready to be out to the world, and in such a public way. It was great and very Hollywood movie-esque, but I wish the change from his extreme closeted-ness had been handled a little more smoothly and gradually.
I do also think the chemistry between these two was just okay. We got scenes with them aplenty, but I still didn't feel like we were getting enough, which to me means I wasn't getting enough in their scenes together, chemistry wise. This book would have greatly benefited from Jesse's POV. I really like the trend that most romance books do now of doing both POV's. One POV just takes a lot to make work in a romance.
While I liked these two, especially near the end, it was slow going for me on feeling much between these two, and by the end they were just likable. I didn't love them.
This slightly less than 200 page book took me a bit to finish, which says something. It didn't have enough really interesting scene until near the end, which made me round up instead of down on this, because I did gain back some interest near the end with the coming out drama.
So overall, this gets a solid 3.5 stars, it showed the potential of this author really well, there were just obvious kinks to work out that, having read this author's later works, she did work out later on.
She said in the AN at the beginning that she revisited this last year and she felt she didn't have to make extensive edits and for the time, it can stand as is, and for the most part I agree - it felt very realistic, how horribly some people reacted when things started to come out - but I do think some things, like the transition from looking going extremely closeted to out could have been included, and maybe including at least a few Jesse POV scenes. I think that would have greatly improved this.
So as is, it was entertaining for the most part overall, it just needed more to really bring this home as a great one. Glad I read this oldie - it served to remind me how different things were just 16 years ago. Oh how time flies. I was just starting my freshman year in high school when this came out haha. Wild.
Onto the next!