Bianca Brannen knows time--mostly--heals all wounds. Including those your once loved ones might have unintentionally given you. (Those just take longer.)
She thinks she’s ready when a call has her walking back into her old friend’s life. Or at least as prepared as possible to see the starting quarterback in the National Football Organization. Before the lights, the fans, and the millions, he’d been a skinny kid with a heart of gold.
Waltzing out of Zac Travis’s life should be easy. Just as easy as he walked out of hers.
Comment: This is the 11th book by this author that I try. Except for two, one below and one above, I have placed all the books in the four star level and that is pretty much what I imagined going into this one. Sadly, despite being very illustrative of the author's usual style, I've found it a little less captivating than others.
Bianca Brannen is working part-time at a gym, dreaming of the day her co worker can find another job so that she, too, can quit and dedicate herself solely to her vlog, which is finally allowing her to pay the bills. Before that happens, she has to endure the new obnoxious boss and in the meantime her best friend and cousin VBoogie asks for her help and that is why she finds herself at the house where Zac Travis is currently living. Zac, a professional football player, seems to go through a hard time in his career, and she is certain he won't remember her from their younger years, since it's been 10 since they last spoke. She does give him the message and somehow they slowly reconnect. But for Bianca he had always been more than a friend, why revisiting all those feelings now, she wonder, could it be that he feels something too?
This author has a very recognizable style. She writes in first person, from the POV of the heroine and all her books feature people with interesting dynamics and plenty of professional/work related situations. I have enjoyed pretty much all the books' premises but two of my favorite stories have been about heroines who fin their HEA with an athlete. Therefore, I was quite hopeful regarding this one too.
Unfortunately, things didn't quite go that way, although at first I was confident they would, especially since Bianca wasn't having a good time at work. I thought the hero would join the gym and then lots of longing and stuff would happen which, with the despicable boss there, could make for interesting interactions and situations. Plus, I have previously enjoyed one or two other plots featuring main characters working at a gym, so...
Well, it turns out that being at the gym was more a side note for Bianca, to add to some frustration in her life, rather than it being a specific element for the development of the main plot. This means that the "meaty" part of the story is the slow reconnecting between her and Zac and the worries in their lives about other things. For Zac we understand he isn't feeling very confident with how things are and for Bianca all the worries about Zac and her vlog, which is now a real money maker for her. I mean, I cannot say these things are bad, only they felt a little boring to me.
When I think about the other books by the author that I liked more, part of the fun, even more than the slow burn romances, was the character interaction and the situations the characters had to deal with. Somehow, in those books, all these things seemed competent but interesting, they allowed me to have a certain notion of the characters, which is great if the story is told in first person. Sadly to me, I didn't think Bianca was that stimulating as a protagonist. In fact, there were times I felt things were very repetitive (and not only due to the book's length) because she wasn't that charming.
I wasn't very interested in her work thoughts, nor in her rehashing what had happened or not with Zac... well, basically I wasn't too taken by her. She is cute and easy to sympathize with, as are all the author's heroines, but Bianca sometimes felt a little whiny. I'm aware I'm being unfair, but that's how she read to me. Perhaps this would be solved by having the hero's POV but while I tend to like and identify with heroines who don't act confident and who have some self esteem issues, this time I couldn't get there with Bianca.
A huge part of these novels is to savor the slow burn romance. In some novels, things were quite well done, to the point that when they finally admit tehir feelings, it's like a "aha" moment. Here, it was another less positive aspect, for I didn't see any chemistry between Bianca and Zac. I don't think the author has managed to convey this properly with Bianca's POV and adding the fact this is, in part, a "friends to lovers" type of romance, with a little bit "lovers reunited" (although they had not been a couple ten years ago, they were emotionally close), two tropes I don't care much about, reading this romance novel was not very fun.
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