Sacked by Jen Frederick

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Title: Sacked
Author: Jen Frederick
Series: Gridiron #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: September 6th 2015
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 398
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Sports Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 #LetsReadIndie Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Adult Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Winter Switch 2017/18
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

What he wants he gets...

Knox Masters is a quarterback's worst nightmare. Warrior. Champion. And...virgin. Knox knows what he wants--and he gets it. All American Football player? Check. NFL pros scouting him? Check. Now, he's set his sight on two things. The national title. And Ellie Campbell. Sure, she's the sister of his fellow teammate, but that's not going to stop him. Especially not when he’s convinced Ellie is the one.

...but he's never met her before.

But Ellie isn't as sure. She's trying to start a new life and she's not interested in a relationship...with anyone. Beside it's not just her cardinal rule of never dating her brother's teammates that keeps her away, but Ellie has a dark secret that would jeopardize everything Knox is pursuing.

Knox has no intention of losing. Ellie has no intention of giving in.

My Review:

3.5 stars — This was a fun sports story, and in general I liked both characters, but it was just missing something to really wow me.

Knox was a bit of a dichotomy to me…he could be sweet and romantic, he had strong convictions, worked very hard, was extremely disciplined, all that good stuff.  I admired a lot of things about him, and he occasionally made me swoon.  I especially loved how he wasn’t ashamed of being a virgin, that was nice to read.  But he could also be very guy-y in some ways…he used, not exactly foul language, but…you know, crude I guess?  Which I don’t have a problem with necessarily, it just caught me off guard…I wasn’t expecting it from him.  I will also say that I wasn’t always impressed with his sense of entitlement.  For example, when that kid at the first party was being a jerk to Ellie, he just kind of excused his behavior instead of dressing him down…it felt a bit “boys will be boys” (though it wasn’t quite that bad).  And Knox would, like, expect things…he played his king of the campus role very well and basked in it sometimes.  It just rubbed me a bit the wrong way.

Ellie could be very sweet, and I felt for her vulnerability and how her childhood had shaped her and broken her down.  She got to my heart with that.  But it was hard to not be annoyed with her lack of backbone at times.  However she did finally end up growing, and eventually redeemed herself.  It was just that while I don’t mind those traits (even occasionally like them and search them out), I tend to like them in moderation…like there’s a line, and she straddled it.  I loved her relationship with her brother though, even as it was dysfunctional.

I was a bit disappointed in the romance.  There was a lot of steamy chemistry, but given a virgin hero, I expected to get a lot more emotional connection.  But instead once the cherry was popped, it was sex sex sex.  It’s not that we got nothing else, we got to see Knox take care of Ellie, and they had a good humourous rapport, but it was very much in the background, and the focus of their relationship and “love” in this story was on the sexual chemistry.  And that’s not my bag.  I prefer a strong emotional connection that enhances the steamy scenes, and I felt like that was lacking a bit here.  And some things towards the end just didn’t feel as believable, it was almost a bit too over the top for me.

I actually really enjoyed a lot of the side characters, and I’m curious about them, but I doubt I will bother looking into more books in the series, b/c it’s probably just not a romance fit for me.

One last thing, and I apologize b/c it’s going to be a bit nitpicky.  I’m not sure if this was an early book in this author’s writing career, but the editing could have used another pass.  I’m really sensitive to noticing continuity errors unfortunately, and there were a number of them.  At one point where Ellie finally talks to Jack and they talk to the Coach, it went from Tuesday to Sunday to Tuesday to Wednesday all in one day.  And Ty was supposed to come straight to the game and then he came the night before for supper.  That stuff just bugs me, but I’m sure I’m part of a very tiny minority that even notices that stuff.  Honestly, it actually bugs me more than the typo/grammar stuff that gets other people (of which there were also some of those things).  And it felt like some bits of the story were rearranged, b/c they didn’t flow in a logical manner, or there was repetitiveness.  Not a huge deal, but if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, you’ve been warned.

So yeah.  This one was cute and fun, but just not a good match for me personally in the end.  C’est la vie!