Not My Romeo - Ilsa Madden-Mills

                                             

Book: Not My Romeo

Author: Ilsa Madden-Mills

Series: The Game Changers, #1

Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Sports

Format: Kindle e-Book

Publication Date: 18th August 2020

My Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

Date Finished: 9th September 2021

Description:

We start off with a lie on Valentine’s Day.

My blind date isn’t the studious guy I expected: he’s a drop-dead gorgeous player with sinful amber eyes. Somehow we end up at his penthouse. I blame the gin and tonic.

The next day I learn he’s Jack Hawke—bad-boy professional quarterback with a murky past. The NDA he has me sign should be a warning that he isn’t a regular person. Please. I sign it Juliet Capulet, so goodbye, famous football player with abs of steel, and good luck tracking down this small-town librarian.

But Jack keeps showing up in places I least expect him. Just when I’m sure he’s gone, he waltzes into my community theater and wins the part of Romeo to my Juliet. How’s a plain, mostly innocent girl like me supposed to resist a man like him?

Is Jack my real Romeo… or will this gorgeous football player only break my heart?

Review:

You know when you read a book's description and question how it can go from a mix up on a date to the jock turning up in your small towns play? Well, I was intrigued by that part the most. And also, a bit of cover love! I mean, look at that guy!

So, as I mentioned above, this starts with a mix up on Valentine's Day when Elena sits down with her supposed date for the evening. It's a bit of "crossed-wires" but they can't help but be drawn to each other for various reasons and they end up spending the night together. A series of events sees them thrown together again and again and their attraction grows into something uncontrollable.

Elena was that character that's a little bit quirky, a little bit ballsy but also a little nerdy. She was great and I quickly fell into her character arc with her naughty underwear she created herself and wore all the time. I liked how she had a great camaraderie with her housemate and her Aunt and reading her thoughts about people's reactions to meeting Jack and what she would love to do to them. She had me smiling a lot.

I grew to really like Jack the more we got to know him. He was this mix of shy, sweet and alpha. He'd had a troubled childhood and struggled to connect with people he didn't know well, and after being burned by his last girlfriend he's wary of letting people get close. But it was so beautifully tragic in a way, because you could see how much he cared for her but not enough to let her in and this quote from the book pulled at me in it's perfect grasping of the situation.

"But Elena isn't a mistake.

[...]

God.

She's the girl a man dreams of finding someday...everything I always wanted.

And I threw it back in her face.

I reacted without listening.

You lobbed another interception, Jack.

You lost the fucking game."

I was almost in tears by this point in the book. We'd seen both characters with their alternate POV's and we knew they both had feelings for the other and I had become emotionally invested in these two. I wanted them to get their HEA's! Luckily we have a rather fun version of Romeo & Juliet to read through as we see these lovers ad lib their way through their lines as they try and tell the other how they feel.

"I did so much wrong, and it's my own damn fault for being...broken since the moment we met."

"I meant it as a symbol that I wanted more with you, but then I'd get nervous and not bring it up. I felt so unsure. I've never loved anyone. I'm stupid." 

*Sigh* Jack, Jack, Jack, you sweetheart. Yeah, this one hit me in the feels.

I do have several more books by this author to read on my Kindle and I will be reading them shortly but for now, I'm going to read a non contemporary book since I'm pretty sure this is going to give me a book hangover and I'll be thinking about it for a while.