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Review: Crossing the Touchline (Auckland Med. #2) by Jay Hogan

What if you’ve worked your whole life for a dream, to play rugby for the most successful sports team on the planet, the New Zealand All Blacks?

What if that dream is so close you can smell it?

What if you meet someone?

What if you fall in love?

What if your dream will cost the man who’s stolen your heart?

And what if the dream changes?

Reuben Taylor has a choice to make.

Cameron Wano is that choice.



DNF

My grandmother has a saying when she's unsure about a new recipe: "it has good stuff in it"! ™

This book has good stuff in it including an athlete who's built like a brick shithouse and a femme and self-proclaimed sassy guyliner wearing love interest. Plus, they're really into each other which has its appeal. There's a slight age difference too!

That's size difference, age difference, femme guy, closeted athlete in a sports romance for the folks keeping track at home, all of which are my kryptonite. So this, by all rights, should've been a feast. But sometimes you can have the creme de la creme of ingredients and it still doesn't turn out like you want it to.

Unfortunately, Crossing the Touchline rapidly deflated like a soufflé for me.


I wanted to like it. Heck, I wanted to LOVE it.

But some things made that challenging and I know myself well enough to know that if I continue I'll nitpick this thing until it looks in the neighborhood of this:


No one needs that, ammiright?

However, I will list some of the things that bothered me in no particular order:

The internal dialogues of both Cam and Reuben, both of which I found grating.
The dearth of emotional maturity on both of their parts.
They sound, and even to a certain extent, think almost exactly the same.
The squirreling.
The info dumps.
Cam's "sassy" comes across as more dickish.
There was this pervasive sense that this story was trying too hard which made it feel clunky and stilted.

Perhaps things improve as the story evolves but, like I said, I've no wish to pick this thing apart on the off-chance it doesn't nor do I wish to negatively review a new author.

Obviously, my opinions are my own and YMMV.




An ARC was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.





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