carolesrandomlife

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life.

3.5 Stars!

I had a great time reading this book. I love baseball and any book that features baseball players immediately appeals to me. This was a nice light romance with very likable characters. This is the second book in the Boys of Summer series but it reads just fine as a stand alone novel. I haven't read the previous book in the series and didn't feel like I was missing anything in this story.

This story focuses on Nikki and Jake. Nikki is the new PR person for the New Jersey Sonics and she seems more a little uptight. She has been tasked with cleaning up the teams image and hopefully improving ticket sales. She has her work cut out for her with this rough group of ball players. She immediately puts some rules in place to help this team achieve an All-American image. Jake is the shortstop for the Sonics and one of the star players on the teams. He has a reputation as a player and ladies man. After making a bet with some of his teammates, Jake sets his sights on Nikki.

We soon learn that Nikki isn't quite as uptight as she first appears and Jake has a whole other side that nobody really sees. The chemistry between the pair grows as they spend increasing amounts of time together. I really liked Jake a lot in this story. He ended up being suck a nice guy who didn't seek any kind of reward for any of his good deeds.

The story was a bit predictable but that didn't take anything away from the enjoyment of the story. A couple of times in the story I felt that the author's word choice felt awkward. Even though a word may have the same meaning as another word, I think that it is important to choose the right word for the story being told. A baseball coach masticating his gum just felt out of place to me. Thankfully, this only occurred a couple of times in the story.

In the end, I really enjoyed this romance. I adored the scene at the charity auction and though that the relationship between Jake and Nikki felt completely authentic. I would recommend this book to romance fans that love a sports romance. The baseball team really adds to this story. This is the first book by Katie Rose that I have had a chance to read and I look forward to more in the future.

I received a copy of this book from Random House Publishing Group - Loveswept via Net Galley for the purpose of providing an honest review.