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 familyβs 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 isnβt afraid of telling Gaby that heβs 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 losingβboth on the rink and off. Itβs his
competitiveness that makes him so damn good at what he does
. . . but it also makes him just a little bit complicated.
One minute Gabyβs tempted to give in; the next, sheβs
getting cold feet. How can she trust a guy whoβs 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.
No excerpt available.
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