Perfect Catch (Sierra Dean)
Perfect Catch is the second book in Sierra Dean's "Boys of Summer series after Pitch Perfect. It features Alex Ross, the catcher for San Fransisco Felons as well as Tucker's best friend (the hero of book #1) and Alice Darling, who works as umpire for minor baseball league during spring training season.
I would like to commend Ms. Dean for featuring a woman with interesting occupation. Duly noted that the number of sport-romance books that I have read maybe lower than fans of this genre, but I think female umpire character in romance is quite rare. I was pretty excited with it.
Unfortunately, Alice's professional life as an umpire didn't have a bigger role than I expected. Considering the uniqueness of this job, I want to read more about the ins and outs of being a female umpire. There was one scene in the beginning, where Alice had to deal with an asshole of a player and I thought she was excellent there. She kept her head cool and didn't back down on her decision. I thought that scene was quite engrossing. Which was why I was disappointed that I didn't get more of that.
Instead, the story mainly dealt with Alice's issue in starting relationship with a baseball player. Alice held Alex in arm's length because she had been burned by a baseball player before. Almost a decade ago she dated one and she ended up with a daughter that he refused to acknowledge publicly. This made Alice distrusts baseball players in overall. In addition, Alice insisted that the relationship would not work anyway because they would have long distance relationship most of the time, with Alex traveling during the season, while she stays in Florida.
This became the source of my frustration with relationship. I could understand that Alice wanted to protect herself from making the same mistake, but she didn't completely stick to her principle all the time. Alice accepted Alex's offer for dating, had sex with him, and when Alex left, she text-ed him a lot. Also, Alice realized that she was using the men (her ex and then Alex) as people to blame for rather than dealing with her own issues, but she didn't really stop doing it. Then when shit hit the fan, she immediately blamed Alex for everything, accusing him of leaking the reporters about their relationship in purpose.
Honestly, I found this push-pull reaction to be a bit off-putting and made Alice less than likeable for me.
Alex, on the other hand, was quite a darling. I thought he was sweet. When she was with Olivia (Alice's daughter), he tried to make a connection with her. Alex was also more of a beta hero: he wasn't domineering, he didn't stand over six feet tall, and he didn't act all possessive-like. He genuinely wanted to make the relationship works and he wanted Alice to see that he wasn't like her asshole of baby daddy. This made me in favor of Alex more so than Alice (gosh, they have similar names!). At times I thought that he deserved someone better. Especially the problem with Alice bled into the ballpark and hurt someone else in the process.
I guess I was expecting something a little bit different with the story -- especially since Ms. Dean had a very good premise of this story, with Alice being a female umpire and Alex a baseball player. I thought the complication of their situation would already be interesting to be explored, without Alice's rules of not being involved with baseball players.
Anyway, everything concluded rather fast in the end -- truthfully, I would expect Alice to do some groveling. I always say so when it is the hero that done stupid thing; I guess it is fair that the heroine should do the same if she is the one messing things up.
All in all, this one falls into okay category in my book. I really loved Alex but I had a hard time warming up to Alice. I guess in the end, their romance didn't convince me much to root for their happiness.
I would like to commend Ms. Dean for featuring a woman with interesting occupation. Duly noted that the number of sport-romance books that I have read maybe lower than fans of this genre, but I think female umpire character in romance is quite rare. I was pretty excited with it.
Unfortunately, Alice's professional life as an umpire didn't have a bigger role than I expected. Considering the uniqueness of this job, I want to read more about the ins and outs of being a female umpire. There was one scene in the beginning, where Alice had to deal with an asshole of a player and I thought she was excellent there. She kept her head cool and didn't back down on her decision. I thought that scene was quite engrossing. Which was why I was disappointed that I didn't get more of that.
Instead, the story mainly dealt with Alice's issue in starting relationship with a baseball player. Alice held Alex in arm's length because she had been burned by a baseball player before. Almost a decade ago she dated one and she ended up with a daughter that he refused to acknowledge publicly. This made Alice distrusts baseball players in overall. In addition, Alice insisted that the relationship would not work anyway because they would have long distance relationship most of the time, with Alex traveling during the season, while she stays in Florida.
This became the source of my frustration with relationship. I could understand that Alice wanted to protect herself from making the same mistake, but she didn't completely stick to her principle all the time. Alice accepted Alex's offer for dating, had sex with him, and when Alex left, she text-ed him a lot. Also, Alice realized that she was using the men (her ex and then Alex) as people to blame for rather than dealing with her own issues, but she didn't really stop doing it. Then when shit hit the fan, she immediately blamed Alex for everything, accusing him of leaking the reporters about their relationship in purpose.
Honestly, I found this push-pull reaction to be a bit off-putting and made Alice less than likeable for me.
Alex, on the other hand, was quite a darling. I thought he was sweet. When she was with Olivia (Alice's daughter), he tried to make a connection with her. Alex was also more of a beta hero: he wasn't domineering, he didn't stand over six feet tall, and he didn't act all possessive-like. He genuinely wanted to make the relationship works and he wanted Alice to see that he wasn't like her asshole of baby daddy. This made me in favor of Alex more so than Alice (gosh, they have similar names!). At times I thought that he deserved someone better. Especially the problem with Alice bled into the ballpark and hurt someone else in the process.
I guess I was expecting something a little bit different with the story -- especially since Ms. Dean had a very good premise of this story, with Alice being a female umpire and Alex a baseball player. I thought the complication of their situation would already be interesting to be explored, without Alice's rules of not being involved with baseball players.
Anyway, everything concluded rather fast in the end -- truthfully, I would expect Alice to do some groveling. I always say so when it is the hero that done stupid thing; I guess it is fair that the heroine should do the same if she is the one messing things up.
All in all, this one falls into okay category in my book. I really loved Alex but I had a hard time warming up to Alice. I guess in the end, their romance didn't convince me much to root for their happiness.
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