As a tennis nut I knew this book would be right up my alley and I wasn’t wrong… I loved it from start to finish.
This is unquestionably a story about love conquering all. Viva is an all-star female tennis player at the top of her game until one foot fault penalty looses her the match title and her confidence and she is never the same again. Viva blames the over eager lines-woman for her loosing the game and holds onto the grudge until they bump into each other in the Australian outback when Viva is heading home to visit her family.
Gabriella always plays by the rules, especially when it comes to her job as a professional Tennis Umpire. She is ready for her next big career move into top tier umpiring but what she doesn’t expect is Viva to walk into her life and change everything, for example, breaking the biggest rule of all… no relationships with tennis players. But Viva makes Gabriella want to forget the rules and everything she has worked incredibly hard for.
Firstly, I love tennis, especially women’s tennis so this book had my attention before I even started it. So when it landed in my mailbox I was more than slightly excited and Cheyenne Blue did not let me down. The book was written from both main protagonists POV and was interesting to get to know them both, especially the very stand offish Gabriella.
What’s excellent about this book is that you do not need to be an aficionado on tennis to get the book, it’s not all about tennis, it centres around both these beautiful women and their struggle to be together. Don’t get me wrong, tennis plays a major role but it’s not written in a way where you’re Googling tennis terms all the time to check what’s going on… this is something I have been stung by before so I was really happy that it was written as a book for romance lovers, not just tennis fans.
This book is definitely a slow burn but not in usual sense. It’s apparent pretty quickly that these two protagonists are attracted and care for one another but the narrative takes its time on the route to them actually becoming an item. The characters are more of ‘opposites attract’ trope and it worked beautifully in this story. My favourite character was Gabriella, which surprised me because normally Viva would be definitely up my street however, Gabriella’s character unravelled slowly and something about Viva made her toss caution to the wind, which I thought was really sexy. I loved how strong willed and passionate she was and that when it came down to it, she valued her career as highly as Viva’s even though Viva was the famous one.
I loved the secondary characters especially Jelina and Alina. I finished the book and pondered straight away if there was a sequel there for them, almost like the Ice Queen and the nice girl… food for thought!
I can’t wait to re-read this one in a few months when the Australian Open begins, it’s definitely my favourite sports Lesfic to date.
5 stars
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