Reviewer: Rowena
Game On by Katie McCoy

Publication Date: October 21, 2015
Genres: New Adult
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Rule of reporting 101-- don't bang your subject.

Sophie Hall has just gotten the opportunity of a lifetime--to profile Nathan Ryder, the hottest baseball player since A-Rod, for her first solo assignment as a reporter. Rumor has it Nathan is going to be drafted to the Major league, and yet he still fits an intense training regime around volunteering at a animal shelter. He's a prodigy with a heart of gold, as American as apple pie and has an ass that deserves a trophy all its own. He may be the country's heartthrob, but Sophie isn't going to fall for that. She just has to remain objective and cover the story.

But she didn't bet on Nathan's gorgeous green eyes or the way his arms flex with muscle when he's holding a bat. And she certainly didn't think he'd be witty and smart and caring. Nathan is completely untouchable, but she can't help it if those lingering gazes turn into something more. How could she not fall at the thought of the hottest guy she's ever met devoting his limited free time to saving kittens?

When Sophie's scoop turns into Nathan's scandal, Nathan needs her more than ever. With both of their careers on the line will they strike out - or hit a home run?

I love sports romances. I love athletes and so when this book came across my radar, I wanted to read it. I’m not too wild about journalist heroines but in this book, it wasn’t Sophie that drove me nuts, it was most everything else.

Sophie never went to college, she got a job as a journalist and has to work her butt off to get where she is today. Her hard work has gotten her as far as she’s gotten so far and when she’s assigned a profile of star baseball player Nathan Ryder, she’s determined to do a good job.

Their first meeting was great and I finished that scene thinking that this story had potential but as the story progressed, I couldn’t help but feel that this book was bogged down with too many cliches. I know that contemporary romances are formulaic so for me, the characters have to pop and while I enjoyed both Nathan and Sophie, they weren’t very memorable to me. They were cookie cutter characters that didn’t really do anything for me. Add to that the token dickhead man co-worker who is out to get Sophie fired from her job and just all around cheesiness – it all just didn’t work for me.

I did like some parts of the book, like the friendship that blossomed between Sophie and Mandy. Sometimes you just click with another person and a friendship is almost instaneous so that friendship was believable. I would have liked to have gotten to know Mandy more as I thought she was an interesting character and I thought her crush on Chris was adorable but apart from that, I just couldn’t get into anything else in this story.

The romance happened at warped speed. Now, a friendship happening that quickly, I can get it but a romance between the hero and heroine? It can happen, I’m not saying that it couldn’t but I didn’t buy how quickly Nathan and Sophie went from lusting after each other to loving each other and wanting to spend the rest of their lives together. So while there were snippets of the story that I liked, for the most part, this book didn’t work for me and that bummed me out because I was looking forward to loving the hell out of a new baseball player. Sadly, that didn’t happen for me.

Grade: 2 out of 5