A solid 3.5 sports romance. This book had a lot of things that worked for it and a few things that weren’t so great.
To start, I absolutely love that the cover of this book was not just a shirtless man. The addition of the dog in the photo makes it super appealing plus he actually looks like he’s having fun?
I also liked that the FMC had an unusual hobby/career path. You don’t see a lot of books with a cellist as the main character. She was on the hot mess express for most of the book, which was endearing most of the time but obnoxious at others.
The MMC was great. He seemed mature and well adjusted, which is sometimes a rare find in this genre. I loved his love for Monty. His dares at the beginning of the book were also a big highlight for me. I wish that there had been more dares throughout the book ….seeing that the title has the word dare in it. Plus the word dog….we only ever met two dogs and on some level they weren’t really that big of a part of the plot.
My favorite part of this whole book though was the social life of the senior citizens. They were the stars of this book. I loved meddling Mrs. H.
The things that didn’t work so well for me were things like the poorly translated French. I promise you there’s a world of people who would love to help you translate things instead of going it on your own if you’ve never taken French or don’t speak it. I also don’t really know how it helped the plot…so there’s that.
The chemistry between Luke and Summer was there but it was like a warm pot rather than a scorching read. In the beginning, I kinda thought she was going to end up with Antonio because they seemed to have more in common and better chemistry.
Another thing I struggled with was that while it was a sports romance….the sport didn’t seem to play that big of a part.
I also struggled because every once in a while, someone would call the dog Lillie when her name is Milli and I don’t know if that was intentional…I’m assuming not because I doubt that Summer would forget her own grandmothers dogs name.
Lastly, the characters, while somewhat developed, still fell a little flat. What was Luke’s favorite meal, what pet peeves does he have? We know he likes dogs and dares and football and dislikes his dad but beyond that? No idea.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
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