Rating: 2.5 Stars
Genre: Romance, Adult, Fiction, Sports
Ok, so it took me a minute to write my review on the last book of this series, but here we are getting it done!
I honestly can’t really say that I enjoyed this book. As mentioned in my review for Playbook #3, I enjoyed book one and two. In the very beginning of this book there is an Author’s note that basically stated she wrote this book based off of her experiences and before all of the Colin Kaepernick news. Based on that, I kind of knew what direction this book was going to take. While that’s not a bad thing, I just didn’t like how the story played out and I hate how Alexa Martin always waits until the very end to give details about what is going on and thens does a rush job at ending the book.
This book really gets deep into racial injustice issues. The romance takes some time to build up to. When I started reading this book, I was expecting more sports romance, similar to the first three books. That seemed to be the theme of this series. However, this book took an entirely different direction and I feel it didn’t fit in the series. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the character’s, I just really didn’t think the book was that good.
Quinton is the star quarterback and also a black man who makes the conscious decision to take a knee to protest inequality and racial issues in the NFL. Now, it was obvious what his purpose was in making this decision, but I dislike the fact that it took soooooo long for the author to really explain the why. It was literally a secret until the very last few chapters.
Elliot is a PR executive who is hired to work with Quinton to pretty much control what is put out in the media and convince Quinton to stop taking a knee. If she doesn’t get the job done, her boss basically threatens to fire her.
Quinton and Elliot have the wrong idea about each other from the jump, but they have to work together so they have to make it work. Elliot is biracial and was raised by her father, who is a white male, who taught her to basically not see color. Elliot is very naive to racial issues and I can see how that can realistic. Sometimes we all have to have an experience to truly understand something and that was the case for Elliot
Towards the end, they both start to understand each other. Quinton understands that Elliot was doing certain things because she didn’t want to lose her job. Elliot realizes that Quinton was right when it comes to racial issues. Because of this miracle of a discovery (sarcasm), Quinton decides to give up his values and beliefs to save Elliot’s career. Elliot decides to send out an email to the entire team and suddenly everyone is on board with Quinton’s beliefs and decides to take a knee. Then the whole stadium does it as well.
This is cute and all for the book, but things in life just aren’t that simple and this part was very unrealistic for me. It would be amazing if something like that happened in reality, but come on? You mean to tell me that a simple email suddenly changed everyone’s mind about the racial issues in the league? Suddenly, everyone agrees with Quinton’s views because of an email. Not once did anyone try to understand his values and reasoning for kneeling during any of the games before that day. Not once did anyone think to support him and his decision. But Elliot sends one email and suddenly everyone is on board? Lol…okay.
Now, I’m not going to say that an email wouldn’t bring a few people on board after understanding why Quinton made the decision to kneel. I just don’t believe the ENTIRE stadium and team would be on board just like that. It was just too easy and makes you question; if it was that easy for them to support him, why didn’t they do it to begin with? Maybe I’m being too harsh of a critic, but I personally feel like this could have been written so much better if there was more thought put into it. This part of the book felt so rushed and I think that is why it’s disappointing.
The romance lacks in this book and I felt there was no real connection between Quinton and Elliot. They somehow end up together in the end though.
As a black woman, I will always be here for author’s who try to point out social issues, but this book didn’t fit well in this series. This should have been it’s own book. I also don’t like rushed stories either. There is a lot that takes place in the book, to bring it all together with a simple email, to me, just wasn’t it.
Did you read this book? How did you feel about it.
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