POWER PLAY is New Adult at its New-Adultyist and so if
you're
100% in the bag for NA, then I'd say this is a great
version of the genre and to pick it up. POWER PLAY
delightfully
avoids
the creepier portions of that subgenre (at least to me)
and delivers a good story about burgeoning adults finding
themselves and each other.
Gabby is part of a family business that has long and
intense ties in Detroit. She's a second generation
Italian-American whose family has run a produce market
since they got off the boat. There are a ton (trust me, A
TON) of politics and fascinating wee things about working
in a family business, especially being the second or third
generation, and those parts of the book worked the best
for me. There's a lot of machinations and
over-protection on the part of her father, politics about
her being the only girl, and the fact that she eschewed
college to work in the family business. All that I was in
the bag for.
I was also mostly in the bag for the romance. Landon is a
minor league hockey player who has known (and evidently)
loved Gaby for years. His star is rising,
but we mostly see him interacting with Gaby on her turf
and get very little time on his. I know this is
classified as a hockey book, but I find that link
tenuous. There are hockey romances out there, and I'd more
classify POWER PLAY as a romance that happens to involve a
hockey player. I didn't fully buy his love, not that I
doubted it, it just felt 2-D to me. He makes
her happy and so half the work is there.
What I was 100% not in the bag for was Gaby's tragic
backstory. Rape is a pandemic and we are not, as a country,
allocating appropriate resources to combat that. However,
my
kingdom for a NA novel where no one is raped.
It's getting trope-y instead of powerful. Gaby was affected
by
it all in a way that didn't read as authentic to me. As a
plot
device, I could have done
without it.
Like I said at the top, if you're a NA person pick POWER
PLAY
up. If you're a hockey romance fan, I'm not 100%
sure you'll fall for this one, but POWER PLAY is certainly
not
a
waste of your time to check it out and see.
Beneath her innocent facade, Gabriella Bertucci has her
reasons to be standoffish with guys. Especially guys like
Landon Taylor, a star defenseman on the minor-league
Detroit
Pilots and the object of a serious crush since he first
walked into her family’s market. But when Landon comes
through for her in a moment of crisis, Gaby starts to
wonder
if there might be more to Landon than hard muscles and fast
skates.
Landon isn’t afraid of telling Gaby that he’s got it for
her
bad. The problem is, she seems unwilling to believe it. And
though Landon enjoys his reputation as a cool-headed
athlete, he hates losing—both on the rink and off. It’s his
competitiveness that makes him so damn good at what he does
. . . but it also makes him just a little bit complicated.
One minute Gaby’s tempted to give in; the next, she’s
getting cold feet. How can she trust a guy who’s destined
for bigger and better things to stick around? Then again,
when Landon pulls her close with those powerful arms, the
only thing that matters is right now.
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