I received Night Games as an Advanced Reader Copy from InkSlinger PR for the Night Games Release Day Launch. I read this book early because I actually got the day of the release wrong and thought that I had to have it read by the 02/23/2014. Not exactly a bad thing, but having had the flu for the last two and half weeks, slow and easy really would have won the race.
Collette West kept giving me the very eerie feeling that she was telling a story of my home region for Grey’s homebase. The Beaver Stadium, Blue Room, Crab Shack, and so many spooky familiar things sounded like Scranton–not Stockton, Pennsylvania. The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders are an affiliate of the NY Yankees and their mascot is Quills the porcupine is not far of a huge beaver. Scary in comparison. But I really love back home and she got the feel of it done pretty damn good–even if she has to do the whole, “this is a work of fiction…” disclaimer blah, blah. This was freakin’ amazekittens!
I am going to come out and say my girl Grey is my Book Girlfriend. It’s completely platonic but she is fantabulous and she rocked socks and if it weren’t for the fact that she needs an intervention for her obsessive baseball behavior she and I could paint one another’s nails and gossip while bonding. There is a lot of goings on in this books that has me putting on mental breaks and has my internal alarms blare but Grey is not one of those things. She is such a great character! I have no bones about how she handles situations, what motivates her and how she feels things–with the exception of that out of character stripping thing. That storyline makes no sense and is so out of character and even the explanation sounds bizarre and made up and contrived. Outlandish and as if it were a story made up by a tabloid to cause crap. Collette West we needed something else here that made more sense with Grey’s character.
I don’t exactly understand what draws me to sports celebrity books. I have no interest in sports other than perhaps gymnastics or diving, and those don’t sound as sexy as men spitting, smacking one another’s asses and fist bumping. Chase Whitfield is a douche canoe until he meets Grey and she brings out his inner nice guy. He’s always had the inner nice guy but he’s always prefered to be a douche canoe. The injury he has been nursing since the beginning of the season has been causing him to become less and less sure of himself and when he lands in Stockton he is aware he has been laid lower than ever before. What he hasn’t realized is that when one door smacks you in the tukkers, someone will be there to smack you in the head for filling your ego with BS self-importance. Chase has arrived in Stockton in time to meet his match, find a friend and lose himself to a world of chaos.
Now, I had a lot of issues with Night Games. I couldn’t help but ask myself how healthy a pantser relationship between an obsessed fan and a down on his luck egoist would actually work. Grey who loved solitude and quiet losing the nature that nurtured her and helped settle her going to join the poop ton of a big city is like a cultural rape and that would be like placing your Barbie in the ring with your WWE figures. They didn’t belong together. And then there is just the plain old left over crap from the Stanley deal. Video and recordings are like secret babies. Someone somewhere knows about them, knows what they are and has the power to exploit them. Life is not always coffee and kittens. And then there was that poorly planted friction story of Grey’s stripperhood that causes the side story and so much unrest. Maybe it would have been better if she had dated a female stripper. Or perhaps dated a guy with questionable ties to something shifty, embezzlement or extortion and it was coming out that she might have been involved. The stripping thing was absurd.
I recommend this book for people who liked Tijan’s Broken and Screwed series, Ice Games by Jessica Clare, or Wicked Games by Mercy Celeste.
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Collette West’s Bio:
Collette West grew up as somewhat of a jock-nerd hybrid. Entering the world three weeks premature, her dad nearly missed her birth because he had seats behind the dugout for a sold-out, highly-anticipated match-up between two of baseball’s biggest rivals. Not to be outdone, her book-loving mom taught her how to read by the time she was three. A love of the game coupled with an appreciation for the written word were instilled in Collette’s impressionable brain from a young age. No wonder her characters believe in the philosophy: sports + romance = a little slice of heaven.
Splitting her time between the Pocono Mountains and Manhattan, Collette indulges her inner fangirl by going to as many games as she can from hockey to baseball and downloading every sports romance novel in existence onto her iPad. When she’s not clicking away on her laptop, she enjoys walking her dog in Central Park, satisfying her caffeine craving at the Starbucks on Broadway and keeping an eye out for Mr. Right. But above all, she loves dishing with her readers.
Collette West’s Web Tracks:
Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon Author Page | Mailing List | Email
Collette West on All The Things Inbetween:
Hashtag: Family – Collette West’s: The ABCs of Baseball from Her Heroine Sasha Roberts
Collette West’s Books:
Game Changer Synopsis:
Young, rich, and unaware of how seriously hot he is, Brooks Davison is tearing it up as the latest shortstop for the New York Kings, despite his tendency to blush whenever girls scream his name.
When a health scare forces his best friend, Kyle Roberts, off the team, no one can stomach the thought of replacing him, especially so close to the playoffs.
Until Kyle’s sister, Sasha, steps in, convincing management to let her take his place. The idea of signing the first female player in Major League history proves too tempting for the Kings to resist.
Nevertheless, Brooks doesn’t want any part of it. Sasha is Kyle’s little sister, not some sideshow.
Yet when Kyle takes a turn for the worse, Brooks promises to do everything in his power to help Sasha win a championship for him. Because there’s no way he’s letting either of them down. Not now, not ever
Purchase Game Changer:
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