Double Play

The romance was worth three stars, but the baseball was only worth one. I really don't need yet more PED sanctimony out of my pleasure reading. I couldn't believe the pitcher's recovery process, and the heroine's grasp of journalistic ethics gives bloggers a bad name. ( )

This is an author who knows how to write perfect contemporary romance. Jill Shalvis is always guaranteed to make you laugh; provide a hot relationship, an engaging story, and excellent secondary characters.

Now, I absolutely hate baseball. I didn’t think there was anything more boring than cricket, but it’s possible baseball is. Yet, somehow that didn’t matter to me, and Shalvis managed to make me care about it enough to really enjoy the book.

Pace and Holly are both excellent, well-rounded characters. Pace is a star with a multi-million dollar contract, and Holly is a reporter doing a series of articles about the team and the sport. She’s there, basically, to dig up things the team would rather leave buried - drug scandals, for example. When she discovers there is truth to the rumours, it causes all kinds of problems with her new relationship with Pace.

Shalvis writes stories that are generally lighthearted, but with just enough depth and emotion to stop them delving into Chick Lit Land. She’s one of the few authors who can make me laugh out loud, and yet at the same time I really care about the characters and what happens to them. There is a whole cast of entertaining and individual characters in this book, including the hero and heroine of the second book in the Pacific Heat series.

I very much enjoyed this book. ( )