Guest Reviewed by Ami
Title: High Heat
Author: Linda Morris
Series: Hard Hitters #1
Heroine/Hero: Sarah Dudley/Tom Cord
Genre: MF Contemporary Romance
Length: 230 Pages
Publisher: Berkley/Intermix
Release Date: June 16, 2015
Available at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads
Blurb: Small-town Indiana tomboy Sarah Dudley grew up living and breathing baseball, since her father owned the minor league Plainview Thrashers. A talented player herself, she idolized her brother’s best friend: Tom Cord, a pitcher with a wicked fastball and an even more wicked reputation.
Now, Sarah is the Thrashers’ VP of public relations, and Tom—a star in the major leagues—has been assigned to the club while rehabbing from surgery. It’s Sarah’s job to keep the hard-throwing, hard-living star out of trouble. But when she gets a glimpse of the man behind the bad-boy image, they start to generate more heat than an inside fastball…
Review: My biggest issue with this story – and an important one that influenced my reading experience – was that I truly couldn’t warm up to both Sarah and Tom. Especially Sarah.
See, for a heroine who was described by the hero to be “smart”, “tough”, with “sharp-tongue”, Sarah failed to convince me. I found Sarah to be a total pushover – especially when it came to her chauvinistic father (whom I totally despised by the way), and she was rather meek. She failed to show me that she had enough bite and tenacity to stand up in front of him and say, “You know what Dad, screw your narrow-minded view of women in this business. I’m going to show you how it’s supposed to be done.” It was hard to feel sympathetic towards her when I couldn’t believe in her myself.
In addition, I also found Sarah to still be a little star-struck over Tom; like there was still that younger girl crush that carried over with how she dealt with Tom’s ‘brazen adventure with women’. If Sarah was able to overlook her crush towards Tom like she claimed that she was, Sarah would’ve been able to handle the whole thing with Tom’s ex-girlfriend in a much more cool-headed way. Instead, I found her to be a bit childish in her reactions, thus showing her jealousy very early on.
As for Tom – well, I couldn’t really find anything that made him stand out to me either. He was okay, I guess. He showed that he could be a nice guy if he wanted to, and that he showed Sarah that he had faith in her, even if her family couldn’t. But he also fell into the line of “single man who didn’t want to commit” characters, which, let’s face it, is a dime a dozen in this genre. I don’t mind the trope, but I need the hero to be absolutely impressive (or dedicated to the heroine) to make me champion him all the way through.
Maybe I just wasn’t sold on the ‘good girl and bad boy’ theme like I used to be. Maybe I was a little bit tired with the idea that ‘good girl means that she lives a dull life’ or that a good girl will mean that “she wants to settle down and have a family”. All in all, the story was just okay on my spectrum. I am not that invested enough with the rest of them to check out the sequel. As always, your mileage may vary and you may love this better than I.
Overall Impression: It was okay
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in return for a fair and honest review.*
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