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ems_booknook 's review for:
Changing the Game
by J.J. Mulder
There are elements of this book I really enjoyed and I think I will read more from this author because all the potential was there.
The characters in this book were really strong, I don’t think I’ve ever been so instantly enamoured with a character like I was with Troy. I just adored him from page 1. At first the story gave the impression we were going to get a grumpy/sunshine dynamic but Sam was grumpy for all of a day so that was a bit disappointing as I LOVE grumpy/sunshine.
The cast of side characters in this were great. I especially loved Sam’s sister June, I thought their relationship was really funny and cute. All of Troy’s teammates we were introduced to were well fleshed out and I’m curious about their potential stories.
The pacing of the story didn’t really work. By 30% they were together and everything was fine and I kept waiting for more things to happen but it was a lot like 70% of the story was a super long epilogue.
One thing I found frustrating was learning things about Troy and Sam’s backgrounds but really not exploring them at all. We get told that Troy is an orphan and grew up in foster care but we don’t know how he feels about it or what that experience was like. It felt like Sam never really got to know much about Troy and it made some of their feelings come across as a little bit shallow.
There were a few things in the story that were just very underdeveloped. At the start we’re introduced to homophobic Mr Frank and then he’s never mentioned again. It was built like there would be some tension off the back of that but it never came.
At the start, it’s constantly mentioned how Troy can never sit still, always fidgeting and then it’s just not really mentioned again. Also we suddenly find out right at the end of the book that Troy is obsessed with Ireland and Sam knew this but we didn’t?
The speech throughout wasn’t punctuated correctly with the dialogue tags and it was a bit jarring. I think using more connectives would have helped with the flow of writing too.
I think this would have been a great book with some editing. Im hoping the next book in the series has ironed out some of this stuff.
The characters in this book were really strong, I don’t think I’ve ever been so instantly enamoured with a character like I was with Troy. I just adored him from page 1. At first the story gave the impression we were going to get a grumpy/sunshine dynamic but Sam was grumpy for all of a day so that was a bit disappointing as I LOVE grumpy/sunshine.
The cast of side characters in this were great. I especially loved Sam’s sister June, I thought their relationship was really funny and cute. All of Troy’s teammates we were introduced to were well fleshed out and I’m curious about their potential stories.
The pacing of the story didn’t really work. By 30% they were together and everything was fine and I kept waiting for more things to happen but it was a lot like 70% of the story was a super long epilogue.
One thing I found frustrating was learning things about Troy and Sam’s backgrounds but really not exploring them at all. We get told that Troy is an orphan and grew up in foster care but we don’t know how he feels about it or what that experience was like. It felt like Sam never really got to know much about Troy and it made some of their feelings come across as a little bit shallow.
There were a few things in the story that were just very underdeveloped. At the start we’re introduced to homophobic Mr Frank and then he’s never mentioned again. It was built like there would be some tension off the back of that but it never came.
At the start, it’s constantly mentioned how Troy can never sit still, always fidgeting and then it’s just not really mentioned again. Also we suddenly find out right at the end of the book that Troy is obsessed with Ireland and Sam knew this but we didn’t?
The speech throughout wasn’t punctuated correctly with the dialogue tags and it was a bit jarring. I think using more connectives would have helped with the flow of writing too.
I think this would have been a great book with some editing. Im hoping the next book in the series has ironed out some of this stuff.