Recent Read

As stated - somewhere by me - I haven't done many reviews lately but I have done some on GoodReads.  I thought I may as well put them up here too.



Taking Shots by Toni Aleo

Elli Fisher has never thought she was good enough, let it be her job, her weight, her love life, nothing. That is until she meets Shea Adler. After doing a promotional shoot for the NHL team, the Assassins, she meets the hunky hockey player who shoots a puck, shattering her world.
Shea Adler was tired of the life he was living outside of the rink. The girls, the money blowing, the drinking, everything had to stop and it all did when he met Eleanor Fisher. He had never met anyone like her. She was feisty, witty, shy, and simply gorgeous. When he laid eyes on her, it was as if he was taking the hardest hit of his life into the boards, and he had to have her. Elli is a little skeptical of Shea, but he knows that they were meant to be together, and he needed her in his life.
Can Elli throw her insecurities out the window and love Shea with everything inside of her, or will she let a past relationship, and her family ruin any chance of her being happy.


My rating: 1 of 5 stars

There are good hockey books and then there are bad one.  This is NOT a good one - at least for me.

I'm kind of surprised I finished this book. It's kind of tough to start the year off reading such a horrendous book but then I suppose I can only go up after this.

There were SO many things wrong with it I'm not even sure where to begin so I'll just list them as they come to me.

Very stilted dialogue between hero (?) and heroine (?). At times they sounded like a couple of junior high kids who have never talked to a member of the opposite sex before.

A heroine(?) who obsesses about how overweight she is AND SHE'S A SIZE F'IN 10!!!!!!! Give me a break. I could only dream of being that size. While I can see obsessing about weight if she truly was overweight, I constantly wanted to smack her upside the head and tell her to get over it.

The WAY over abundance of the word awesome. First off, I think only Mutant Ninja Turtles might use it anymore and a hero (?) who constantly uses it? UUGGHH.

I don't think the author made hardly any attempt to make the hero(?)sound like or act like a guy. Having raised two sons, they would never talk like Shea. Never. And if they did, I'd tell them to 'man up'.

The fact the heroine watches Pride and Prejudice almost every single night!! Who does that kind of thing?? There are movies I love and watch over and over but there is no way I'd watch the same movie every night. Add to that the fact that she has a shrine to the hero and the hockey team in her home and girl needs serious therapy. I think she must have stopped maturing at age 11.

The book clocked in at almost 600 pages in the kindle addition and that was way, way to long. It needed some serious tightening up. There were so many scenes that added nothing to the story, that never should have been added. A story needs to be constantly moving, not mired in minutia that adds nothing.

Small things like the hero scored 4 goals in one of the first games of the season, and he's a defenseman. I'm not saying it absolutely couldn't happen, but it's highly, highly unlikely.

The heroine paints her face and puts on the heroes jersey number on her face for every home game. Again this is more the thing a preteen would do, not a mature woman.

The way over the top Snidley Whiplash villian(ess)

And finally, though I could keep going, the final hurdle. If I didn't already despise the heroine, this alone would do it. All thorough the book our unmanly hero has all but stood on his head and sang ' I Am Woman' to prove his love and heroine sees her sister, a sister she knows would love to destroy her, kissing her love and that's it! Relationship over. The heroine cries - ad nauseum. The hero cries. Things are resolved of course, these two losers deserve each other. But this book left a serious bad after taste.

I absolutely do not recommend this book.