Rowena’s review of Play by Play by Kate Donovan.
Former college football star Jake Dublin’s wildly popular sports blog also details his personal life. And lately it’s all about Sophie, the pretty young woman who just moved into his apartment building. His readers know her only as “Elevator Girl,” and they’re all rooting for Jake to score.
The blog posts and banter with his followers are all in good fun, and he fully intends to come clean with the woman he’s wooing and wowing. That is, until she confides that she grew up in a house full of jocks and even dated a few. Her verdict? Never again!
Jake knows he needs to confess. But somewhere along the line he fell in love with Sophie and can’t stand the thought of losing her. So he procrastinates, and blogs, and digs himself deeper into a hole, until it all leads to a showdown that’s so nail-biting, not even the best play-by-play guy could ever have seen it coming.
This was a novella featuring Jake Dublin, freelance writer who has a popular sports blog. On this sports blog he talks about whatever he wants to talk about. Most of it is sports but from time to time, he blogs about his personal life and when he meets his new neighbor, she makes it onto his blog. He’s completely smitten with this girl and wants to get to know her so when she shoots him down that first time, Jake takes to his blog and talks about it. The closer they get, Jake starts to realize that he needs to come clean about who he is and what he’s doing on his blog. Sophie (aka Elevator Girl from the blog) really likes Jake and she likes that he likes whatever she likes and that he’s hot and well, just a lot of things. One of those things that she loves about him? That he doesn’t like sports (haha). The story takes place while Jake is trying to come clean to the girl that he’s quickly falling for and the fallout from what happens when she finally realizes who he is.
This was a short story and it definitely felt like it was a short story. It really could have been a cute story but there was so much cheese thrown in that by the middle of the story, I almost DNF’d it. Jake was a likable character and I thought his blog was pretty decent as well. It was actually pretty funny to see his readership get really into the stories that Jake posted about Elevator Girl. Not once did I think that Jake was this phony guy in his interactions with Sophie but holy goodness Sophie was kind of dumb. I mean, the fickle way that she was about Jake liking sports. First it’s a really good thing that he hates sports and she really likes that he hates sports and then she wants him to like sports just a little bit because sports is a huge part of her family. The connection that Sophie had with Jake’s favorite football coach made me roll my eyes down the street and her cousins? They didn’t come off as protective brothers, they came off as idiot jocks that I couldn’t be bothered with.
I went into this story, wanting to like it and while there were times when I laughed, for the most part I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t care for Sophie as a character, I didn’t understand why Jake fell so hard for her. I didn’t like her at all. Her whole wishy-washy crap and then the way she reacted to Jake’s blog, ugh….it was all just so juvenile. When the book ended, I was glad. It just wasn’t for me.
Grade: 1.5 out of 5
This book is available from Beyond the Page Publishing. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.