Fall Line (Downhill #1) by Tudor Robins

Blurb: Everything’s forward.

Those are fifteen-year-old Chris Myers’ words for the year.

The next gate, the next race, his spot on the district ski team; they’re all his for the taking.

Except training is such hard work. And then there’s Jenna – the very opposite of hard work – gorgeous, curvy, and into partying. Into Chris.

Instead of moving forward, Chris is sliding back. Slower times, worse results, and his best friend, Tilly, drifting away.

 

 

Favorite Quotes

She never meets my eyes. I never even get the tail end of any of the smiles she has for anyone else. Meanwhile a grinding headache builds in my temples. My reflexes are slow, my stamina’s shot, and my temper is on a hair–trigger.

4 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It was unusual in the fact that the POV was entirely male.  At first I was confused because I automatically thought it was female.  Probably because most of the POVs I read are female.  But I really liked his ‘voice’  It was genuine and showed a different side to most male leads I read.  This one was a beta boy for sure and he was super cute.  The fact that his performance in skiiing was actively affected by his personal life was just a great parallel to read about.

Chris has dedication to his craft and knows what he wants to do with his future.  He shows humility when things start to go downhill and takes responsibility for his screw ups.  And I think he shows great courage in asking for help instead of trying to fix everything himself. I really loved how Chris wasn’t cocky about himself.  Too often in YA, the boys are way too arrogant, which we all know isn’t the case IRL.  You could totally see and understand his worry, fear and confusion with his personal life.  He really had no idea what he was doing, poor kid.  And his parents played a bit more of a prominent role than most other YA’s I read, a fact which also made this book stand out for me.

Tilly was a pretty straight forward female lead.  She made it very clear early on what she wanted and what she was on the fence about.  While I think she maybe took her anger a bit too far, placing blame where I don’t think it was so heavily warranted, their were no deliberate misunderstandings in her character and voice.    So that was pretty refreshing in this story.

The skiing was a great addition to the plot of the book. I never used to read sports romances till I met Lenore, but they are fast becoming some of my favorite YA reads.

I’m really shocked this book only has 11 reviews.  It is a great YA, sports romance! Go give this author some love and read it!