Game for Marriage by Karen Erickson (Game for It #1)
Contemporary Romance
January 11, 2013
Entangled
Reviewed by Mandi
I think pretend marriage, or marriage of convenience stories in a contemporary are a hard sell, although in the past I’ve found a few that have really worked for me. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them. As a reader, you obviously have to be convinced that these two people have no other option than to marry. I was never convinced of this. Jared is a professional quarterback who has a reputation as a ladies man. The team has a new PR guy who is on track to get the reputation of the players changed. We are even told the owner would have no problem kicking his star quarterback to the curb if his reputation doesn’t turn around. But I have to stop right here because this is a problem for me. I watch a lot of professional football. I honestly don’t think this is a realistic situation at all. And by no means is Jared some wild guy. An ex-teammate’s wife sat on his lap in a club, and the picture hit the internet, and all of a sudden, if he doesn’t get married he is off the team? This is not how professional sports work.
Worse, I was totally not convinced Sheridan, our heroine would go through with this scheme. Sheridan is a struggling artist, and after a one night stand with Jared, he strolls in with his PR guy and asks her to sign a confidentiality agreement (which she does) to then say hey – be my fake wife and we’ll give you enough money to keep your art studio. And she pretty much agrees right away. Why? She has to be married to practically a stranger for a year for all of this to go down. Her personality just didn’t seem to match something this spontaneous.
Their romance builds up slow, at least the actual love does take awhile to develop which I appreciated. Sheridan demanded a no sex clause in their marriage contract, so after they marry they can’t have sex. This is really the only conflict in the book, which I found a bit lame. But when they do get to the actual sex, there are some hot scenes.
The lack of a true professional football aura and the unconvincing reasons to pretend to get married really had me disappointed.
Rating: C-
Recent Reviews:
Love to Read for Fun – B+
Fiction Vixen – B
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