Rowena’s review of The Striker’s Chance by Rebecca Crowley.
Landing the PR contract for North Carolina’s new soccer team could take Holly Taylor’s career to the next level. Her task? Make Kepler “Killer” de Klerk, an athlete with a party-hard reputation, a star. But revamping the sexy footballer’s image while battling her unwanted attraction to him is easier said than done.
The car accident that derailed Kepler’s European career also gave him some much-needed perspective. He’s ready to give up on fame and focus on the game he loves. The last thing he needs is a headstrong brunette pushing him back into the spotlight, even if butting heads with her is the most fun he’s had in ages.
The more time Holly spends with Kepler, the more she sees how different he is from his tabloid persona. But when she’s offered her dream job for a price, she finds herself torn between the career she’s spent years building and the man she doesn’t want to give up.
I love sports romances and I love football (as the world knows it) or soccer (as the United States knows the sport). So when I saw this book on the blog circuit, I was mighty intrigued. There isn’t a lot of athlete romances with soccer stars that I know of so I wanted to read this one.
This book follows Kepler de Klerk and Holly Taylor as they make their journey toward true love. Kepler de Klerk was a rising star in the European Football League. He was a player that showed a lot of promise but his party boy ways and a car accident where he was behind the wheel ended all of that and gave him time to reflect on what he wanted out of life. What he wanted to accomplish with this second chance to play the sport he loved…in the States.
Kepler has been through a lot. He lost a lot and he was blamed for a lot of things. Some of those things were his fault but a whole lot of it wasn’t. He was the character that I connected with the most in this book. He was taking his second chance as well as can be expected and when Holly Taylor comes into his life, he’s both attracted and horrified that he’s attracted to someone who works in the field that she does. Her job is spin stories in the media about his personal life and yeah, Kepler’s not a fan. But he is attracted to her. And she’s attracted to him.
Holly’s job was to turn Kepler’s reputation around to make him more marketable as a player. Kepler’s job was to turn the team he was now apart of, around. They’ve been having a losing streak that is lasting too long and the club wants that turned around…which is where Kepler comes in. He’s been playing in the big leagues overseas for a while and he’s known for his rough play so they’re hoping that he’ll make things happen here and Kepler does it. He plays his heart out game after game and he’s building a following and things are finally looking up for him and he’s glad. He wants to build a home for himself and it’s looking like that could happen in North Carolina. He’s got a girl warming his bed that he can see a future with and a job that he’s good at and if he has to suffer through some sore muscles and exhaustion, he’s fine with it because it’s part of the life he’s building.
But when all of that comes crumbling down around him again, things between him and Holly get pretty frosty.
Kepler wasn’t a bad hero, I actually really liked him. Holly was the problem character for me. I’m not a fan of the whole secret crap unless the characters reasons for keeping said secrets are justified but I didn’t think Holly’s reasons were good ones. I just couldn’t condone her actions and even though she had her reasons, she knew going into her relationship with Kepler that she had information that he should have known. That he had every right to know, considering they were falling in love with each other. I almost didn’t want Kepler to forgive her. I kind of wanted him to find someone else because I wanted to smack Holly upside her head throughout most of the book.
In the end, things ended the way that they were supposed to and while I ended up being really happy for Kepler, I was still sour on Holly. She became that character that I tolerated at family functions because I had to, not because I liked her. But still, I thought Crowley did a good job of keeping me interested in what happened next between both Kepler and Holly.
Grade: 2.5 out of 5
This book is available from Carina Press. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Leave a Reply