Jag Jensen and Ellen Love had been best friends their whole lives until he turned thirteen and started noticing girls his own age, but that didn’t mean he stopped watching out for eleven-year-old Ellen. By his senior year in high school, baseball had taken the front seat in his life, with a scholarship to college and a pro career looming on the horizon, when sophomore Ellen caught his attention and they struck up their friendship again. Although Ellen wanted more, Jag didn’t want to drag her into what he knew would be a crazy life, but love has a way of deciding one’s future, and eventually they became a couple. Ellen followed him to California as he began his pro career, but his wild and hectic lifestyle screwed everything up.
Now Jag is lost, realizing he’s never been without his best friend in his life. Learning to live without Ellen doesn’t settle well with him, so while trying to remain at the top of his career, he also wants to get his girl back, which proves to be more difficult than he thought it’d be. Will Ellen give him another chance or does that sort of thing only happen in the sappy romance novels she always used to read? Jag hopes she’s willing to try again as he puts his heart on the line for the woman he knows will always be his forever and a day.
I feel I need to start this review
with a personal disclosure so my preferences won’t be taken out on the author
and her work. I have very few pet peeves when it comes to a book, this
one hit three of mine. I don’t like characters who choose to remain in
the poor me victim role throughout the book. I don’t like characters that can’t
fight their own battle when upset with boyfriend/husband. El hit both of
these pet peeves for me. My other pet peeve is when men continue to go
back to the unreasonable girlfriend and grovel for forgiveness when they have
done nothing wrong. Jag did that through most of the book. Now with
that stated, I will say the authors writing style is great, the story could
have been very interesting if I had been able to focus on it more than being
angry at El and Jag. Her character development was great, I just didn’t like
the characters personalities.
Jag finally had his dream come true,
he was picked up by a major league baseball team. He was going to be a
star. He had publicity contracts he had to fulfill, his status was going
to grow and he had the love of his life by his side, El. Moving to LA to
make this happen wasn’t easy on her but she never gave me the impression she
gave much of an effort to make this work. While claiming to love and
trust Jag she was very quick to assume the worst in him at every turn, never
appreciating what he was going through to make sure their relationship was safe
and respected.
When Jag was contracted to do three
commercials with a hot model, El went over the edge. While Jag never did
anything with this crazy psycho model, he sure got blamed for doing a lot of
wrong. El continued to assume the worst and left him, moving back to her
home and transferring schools she decided that it was time for her and her
dreams. So now we have Jag groveling, begging for forgiveness that he
doesn’t even need and they find their way back to each other.
That peace lasted till the second
and third commercial came out and we go back into El curled in a ball hysterical
and her friends and family calling Jag bagging on him about being an
idiot. Finally at the end of this book, El pushed it too far. She
was sent some items that lead her to believe the worse and instead of using the
history she had with Jag and the psycho model, she jumped to conclusions that
ended their relationship. For once Jag moved on, he was sick of defending
himself against things, but will that last when a traumatic event happens in
the last few pages.
We are left with this whole story being
turned upside down and having to wait for the next book to see if the pieces
ever get put back together again. There are a lot of twists and turns in
the story and some edge of the seat wondering as to what will happen
next. I was able to read this book rather quickly because of the writing
style being so smooth, but I was usually left frustrated because El never
learned from her last mistake and Jag just continued to accept blame for things
he didn’t do. I am sure this book will be great for many readers, but it
didn’t do anything for me other than frustrate me because I think those two
could be really awesome together and alone if they dropped the high school
mentality.
Harper Bentley has taught high school English for 21 years. Although she’s managed to maintain her sanity regardless of her career choice, jumping into the world of publishing her own books goes to show that she might be closer to the ledge than was previously thought.
After traveling the nation in her younger years as a military brat, having lived in Alaska, Washington State and California, she now resides in Oklahoma with her teenage daughter, two dogs and one cat, happily writing stories that she hopes her readers will enjoy.
AMAZON / AMAZON CA / AMAZON UK / SMASHWORDS / BARNES & NOBLE
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