Fighting to Score by Lisa B. Kamps

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Title: Fighting To Score
Author: Lisa B. Kamps
Series: Baltimore Banners #12
Published by: Indie
Release Date: January 16, 2019
Format: eARC
Pages: 173
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Sports Romance
Source: L. Woods PR
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2019 AtoZ Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Winter 2018
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Shane Masters has it all: a promising career with the Baltimore Banners, a big house, fast cars, financial security, and—up until a month ago—the woman of his dreams. Now he's floundering, with no idea what he did wrong and no idea how to win her back. To make matters worse, her brother—Shane's former best friend—shows up and decides to get involved. Chloe Hunter has never run from a challenge in her life—until the weekend she visits Shane in Baltimore and realizes he isn't exactly the same man she fell in love with all those years ago. He's too accustomed to getting what he wants and Chloe refuses to be just another prize for the taking. That doesn't mean she's giving up, not yet. Shane will stop at nothing to win Chloe back. But when the past suddenly collides with the present, will he fight for a future with her—or will the game end before their chance to be together even starts?

My Review:

I received a free copy through L. Woods PR in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

3.5 stars — I was really excited about this book after reading the prequel story “Christmas Interference” in the Hockey Holidays anthology.  I experienced a lot of feels in that short story, and I connected with both Shane and Chloe.  But the Shane and Chloe at the end of that story were a LONG WAYS OFF the Shane and Chloe we see in this story.  In the end this one didn’t really deliver what I was hoping for.

First things first, I think NOT reading the prequel first might leave you a bit confused…or at least somewhat unfulfilled.  I can’t imagine not having read it first, I even went back and skimmed the ending before starting this one.

So, on to this story.  Quite honestly, I didn’t really like our main characters in this story, but especially Chloe.  She was wishy washy, evasive for reasons that I never fully comprehended, and I felt like she yanked Shane around (even if unintentionally).  And the author employed the “keep the reader in the dark” technique in this book, and I am NOT a fan of that.  Like Chloe would start thinking about something, some reasons for why she was evasive with her family or ignoring Shane, and then she would say “but I’m not ready to think about that.”  Or something like that anyways.  She did it multiple times, and that kind of thing just drives me nuts as a reader.  It’s a personal taste thing, but I just can never understand the purpose of employing that literary technique, except to perhaps manufacture mystery or something.  But if the character knows, and keeps almost bringing it up, I feel toyed with.  Makes Lenore a cranky reader.  So that probably didn’t help my feelings about Chloe.

When we finally did get answers, I still didn’t quite understand them…or at least I didn’t understand Chloe’s choices and reactions.  And some of them never really got resolved (like they never talked about Shane’s new lifestyle).  And while I felt like I connected with Shane a bit more, I just became concerned for him with the extreme guilt he still suffered from, and how it affected every interaction with Chloe and Wyatt.  I was glad Wyatt encouraged therapy, b/c Shane needed it yo.

I did feel a lot for what they had both gone through in the past, and how it was still affecting their current decisions…though a lot of that was leftover from the prequel.  The problem is that the story ended up feeling really repetitive…they kept going over the same problems and not resolving them.  It felt like a book that needed more meat, because it could have been trimmed down to a novella and the pacing probably would have been better.

So quite honestly, the Shane and Chloe portion of this story was 3 stars at most.  The extra half star all came down to Wyatt.  I was surprised by his character, and the development I saw — particularly b/c I wasn’t a Wyatt fan in the prequel.  But he really seemed to have grown, and I loved seeing him trying to help Shane and Chloe move forward as well.  I also loved getting a look at sled hockey because of him…it added a bit of diversity to the story.

The story ended solidly, and I loved the epilogue.  But if I’m being honest, on the whole the story left me disappointed.  Ah well.