A Winning Season by Rochelle Alers

 

Welcome Back, Booklovers! It's August already and there's so many books I still want to get to before the year ends. A Winning Season promised a small town romance featuring a former baseball player and the girl next door.

Zoey Allen's younger brother  Harper gets into a bit of trouble after attempting to break into former baseball player, Sutton Reeds. Sutton decides that he doesn't want to subject a young Black boy to an unfair justice system and instead makes an agreement with him to do something productive and encourages him to try out for sports. As Sutton mentors the boy and gets settled back into his hometown, he and Zoey become good friends.

Ever read a book where the pacing was both too fast and too slow at the same time? That was my dilemma with this story. I felt Zoey and Sutton very quickly became friends in the beginning of the story so the middle started moving extremely slow while trying to be slow burn romance. And then they were talking about marriage and it felt too fast again.

There was also a lot of repetition in here accompanied by random info dumps in between unrelated dialogue. By the time Zoey and Sutton actually mentioned certain things to each other I had to remember that previously they'd just been thinking about those things for paragraphs on end. I felt as if we read over an over again how Zoey had to grow up fast because she had to take care of her little brothers after her father and stepmother died, how close Zoey was to her stepmother despite their close age difference, how Sutton enjoyed be a mentor to boys who grew up without a father like him, and how shallow his ex wife was. And if I had to read the phrase "pregnant pause" one more time!

Zoey and Sutton did have chemistry but not enough chemistry to hold this book together for me in it's entirety. I understood they were attracted to each other but I didn't understand how it translated to this great love for each other over both being nice people. They also seemed to be in two very different positions in life. I know love is about compromise but Sutton was ready to settle down while Zoey was ready to get her independent adult life started. I contemplated DNFing this book but didn't only because a follower sent it to me and it's short page length. But it started getting painful and unbelievable. 

And  while I definitely appreciate authors using conflict other than 3rd act breakup to create drama the way it was done here was bad. Bad because there was no build up and it happened in the last chapter which then included a very quick and forced wrap up.