A review of their past will make these two contemplate if a future together is possible.
What’s it About?
Love behind the wickets.
English vice-Captain Claude de Lussan is the poster boy for English cricket. He’s smart, handsome, rich and a damn fine cricketer. And Delilah Taylor loves him to bits. Her whole existence revolves around him so much so, she polishes his autographed ball from his first century every weekend as it sits in her cabinet. Except, Claude de Lussan doesn’t love her back.
Following a heady summer, she finds herself suddenly married and divorced from the cricketer only to find him return to her world years later. Can they resolve old hurts and bury the past to rebuild a future together? Can they overcome family resentment, old flames and misunderstandings to accept that they what they had was and still is special?
First Impressions
Alright, confession time. I have never in my life watched a cricket match. Game? Competition? After reading this book I understand wickets are involved…whatever they are…Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, typical American! Well, if it helps at all, it’s not like I’m only into football or baseball, I just don’t care for sports in general. Probably because watching people enduring so much physical activity reminds me how I should probably work out more 🙂 All that being said, do you need to understand all the rules of cricket to understand or follow along with the plot of this novel? No, not really. Every chapter is entitled after a cricket phrase, and our two lead characters do bond over Claude’s expertise in the game. However, I do think it would have added an extra layer of appreciation to understand how the cricket chapter titles maybe corresponded to the content of that chapter, but alas I just had to go with the flow. I will say though I am very intrigued now to watch a cricket match after completing this read!
Plenty of Angst
If I had to describe our lead characters in one word it would be the following: flawed. In a way, it made them more relatable and “human” to see they were subject to making some of the same mistakes, and even jumping to rash conclusions, like we are all capable of doing. The flip side of this though was that it was also kind of difficult to fall in love with our leads for a decent portion of the novel. It wasn’t even until the final scene of the book where I was somewhat convinced that it would be a good idea for Claude and Delilah to make another attempt at a relationship together. Pretty much from day one, Claude was always head over heels in love with Delilah’s friend, Grace, in a way that reminded me of Romeo’s infatuation with Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet. Essentially, you know he’s smitten, but you have absolutely no idea of what he sees in her beyond good looks. Even though he completely adored Grace, her blasé attitude toward him slowly made him turn to Delilah as a second choice.
Claude constantly straddled a line between the two women throughout the whole book. It seemed as though he didn’t really care for Delilah at all as a person until he eventually loses her. He keeps going back to Grace even as she was dating his brother, and when she ultimately reveals herself to be the ultimate duplicitous villainess, Claude is still willing to consider a future with her. At one point in the story Claude and Delilah were really starting to build a strong foundation together, and yet he was more willing to believe Grace’s word over Delilah’s, even though Grace has never really give him any reason to trust her. There was one scene in particular where we witness Grace’s ability to get inside Claude’s head, and it results in him spouting the most heinous vitriol towards Delilah that he no longer seemed relatable as a character, just downright mean. It was during moments like this that I couldn’t help but wonder if Delilah would have been better off without him. We eventually see Claude turn a corner, and realize that he lost something truly special by letting Delilah get away. However, this turnabout sort of came too little, too late in the game for my opinion of him to flip entirely.
*A copy of this book was provided for an honest review*
Series: To Love a Sportsman, book 2. I hadn’t read book one in this series, but had no trouble diving right into this second novel.
Final Impressions: Aside from disliking one half of our lead couple through some critical scenes, another aspect of this read that I had a bit of trouble adapting to was the flashback format. While it was interesting to see scenes of Delilah and Claude divorced in the present juxtaposed against flashbacks to how they met, married and what led to their split, it was also tricky to follow along at times. As the novel progressed, and the timelines got closer together involving their somewhat constant arguing as Claude continued to waffle between Grace and Delilah, it became harder to distinguish between when we were in the past versus the present.
Smut Level: Nothing too descriptive, though there are a few moments of passion. However, seeing as these passionate scenes occurred between Delilah and Claude when he was still technically involved with Grace, it was kind of hard to become fully invested in these sensual moments.
Get it on Amazon: Click Here. $3.99 Kindle Price. TouchPoint Press. 137 Pages.
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