Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by nicole_reads_everything
Contract Season by Cait Nary
2.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Carina Press for providing a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
===
I really enjoyed the first book in this series and was really looking forward to this one, but unfortunately, I can't say that I enjoyed it.
The writing, technically speaking, was solid, but I just could not get into the characters or relationship here. The entire book is incredibly frustrating, and partially that's because I do think the author does a good job writing both Brody and Sea's various issues and anxieties. They both have difficulty communicating with one another, and Sea in particular, is very self-conscious about his lack of experience, and gives off a lot of mixed messages. Brody is understandable confused, but I was confused, because I felt like the entire narrative kept trying to paint Brody as this amazing, understand, perfect guy, and I actually found his actions to be often pretty inconsiderate, and how I saw him just didn't match with what I kept being told. To be perfectly honest, by the end of the book, I legitimately did not think they should be together--I felt the author did a better job showing why they weren't a good fit than making me believe in them. They spend almost the entire book in a constant state of various miscommunication, and while it might actually be realistic/believable, it just didn't make for an enjoyable reading experience.
It's also relatively low steam--they essentially have sex at the beginning, then there's an entire book of frustrating miscommunication, and then they have sex at the end. It made sense for the story, but since I didn't particularly enjoy the story being told... Personally, I'm not a big fan of music books, either, and despite this being slanted as a sport book, the music focus was far more present IMO, with very little hockey. I don't want detailed hockey play info, but I had gone into this expecting more of a sports romance and I got more of a music romance.
So yeah, this one really didn't work for me, which is a bummer, because I really enjoyed book one! I'll certainly still be keeping my eye out for other books by this author, as I'm hopeful this is just an instance of a particular story really not working for me and not an overall mismatch of vibe.
===
I really enjoyed the first book in this series and was really looking forward to this one, but unfortunately, I can't say that I enjoyed it.
The writing, technically speaking, was solid, but I just could not get into the characters or relationship here. The entire book is incredibly frustrating, and partially that's because I do think the author does a good job writing both Brody and Sea's various issues and anxieties. They both have difficulty communicating with one another, and Sea in particular, is very self-conscious about his lack of experience, and gives off a lot of mixed messages. Brody is understandable confused, but I was confused, because I felt like the entire narrative kept trying to paint Brody as this amazing, understand, perfect guy, and I actually found his actions to be often pretty inconsiderate, and how I saw him just didn't match with what I kept being told. To be perfectly honest, by the end of the book, I legitimately did not think they should be together--I felt the author did a better job showing why they weren't a good fit than making me believe in them. They spend almost the entire book in a constant state of various miscommunication, and while it might actually be realistic/believable, it just didn't make for an enjoyable reading experience.
It's also relatively low steam--they essentially have sex at the beginning, then there's an entire book of frustrating miscommunication, and then they have sex at the end. It made sense for the story, but since I didn't particularly enjoy the story being told... Personally, I'm not a big fan of music books, either, and despite this being slanted as a sport book, the music focus was far more present IMO, with very little hockey. I don't want detailed hockey play info, but I had gone into this expecting more of a sports romance and I got more of a music romance.
So yeah, this one really didn't work for me, which is a bummer, because I really enjoyed book one! I'll certainly still be keeping my eye out for other books by this author, as I'm hopeful this is just an instance of a particular story really not working for me and not an overall mismatch of vibe.