NOW AVAILABLE: MAY 7, 2019
I grew up around baseball, so I am a sucker for anything that has baseball has a central part. In this case, Finn Auprince is a megastar baseball player for a fictional team, and Chloe Conrad is hired to be his social media manager.
The camaraderie that grows between them is a delicious slow burn. I loved how the author built trust between the two. I also appreciated that their reactions to events were very natural. There wasn’t any of the melodrama that one often finds in romance novels. I loved Finn’s compassion and also that he wasn’t a total rogue or jerk (also commonly found in romance novels), just someone who was committed to the sport he loved.
One of my favorite aspects of the story, however, was somewhat of a throwaway in the overall plot – but it meant a lot to me. Chloe mentions that she was homeschooled because her dad was an umpire and she had to travel with him during the baseball season. Why was this important to me?
Because Chloe is perfectly normal.
Many of you know that I have homeschooled our son since he was in the fourth grade, and we’ve all heard the stereotypes and misnomers about homeschoolers: they’re socially awkward, they don’t have good people skills, they’re isolated, etc. While those may apply to some homeschoolers, they certainly don’t apply to most.
Chloe is the epitome of the homeschoolers that I am familiar with, and in some ways, she reminded me of my son. She’s outgoing, confident, knows how to deal with people, and has an open spirit about her. The schooling her dad gave her exposed her to so much more knowledge than a traditional school could have. We are doing the same thing.
Oh, and I especially loved that her dad used Brain Quest – we had those for every grade level. I remember standing in line for the Tower of Terror at Disneyland, reading Brain Quest cards to our son. By the time we finally got to the ride, we had quite the trivia competition going on with the people around us.
I love it when an author hits the nail on the head with something like that. It just makes the book that much better. There are two more Auprince brothers to be paired off, and I can’t wait to read their stories. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up to get the series started. My Goodreads review is below.
Heartthrob by
Robin Bielman
My rating:
5 of 5 stars
I loved the story of Finn and Chloe! I appreciated that the author gave some thought into a unique way to bring them together. I also liked that it was realistic: not just the plot, but the characters as well. There wasn’t a lot of angsty back and forth; the doubts that each character had were real emotions that an actual person would feel in the same situation. I literally lol’d more than a few times. Oh, and it’s got baseball and goat yoga, so…yeah, fun times! I can’t wait to read the other Auprince brothers’ stories. Visit my blog at Fireflies and Free Kicks Fiction Reviews for some more thoughts on this sweet romance. This review was written based on a pre-release digital ARC.
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