Monthly Mini Review

Too Close to Call by Tessa Bailey – B Branded as part of the multi-author 1001 Dark Nights series (linked only by a Scheherazade-like prologue), this novella also fits within Ms. Bailey’s Romancing the Clarksons series. I haven’t read the other books in the series and I didn’t have any trouble following the story so it stands alone well. The blurb caught my eye: Guy gets drafted to the NFL from college and realises that it means nothing without the girl of his dreams – the girl who broke up with him in their senior year of high school and who he’s been pining after ever since. He decides he’s going to win her back and heads to his home town to do just that.

To mix my sports metaphors, what follows is a full court press. Kyler Tate has been faithful to Bree Sutton the entire four years they’ve been apart. He still doesn’t understand why she broke up with him after they’d made all these plans to go to college together. But either way, it doesn’t matter, he still loves her and will do whatever it takes to have her in his life.

Bree let Kyler believe she reason she split up with him is that she can’t cope with the spotlight Kyler will inevitably be in because of his prodigious football talent. But the real reason is far closer to home. Given how powerful her reasons were, I admit I didn’t see a complete resolution. I think she made the right decision but I had a few questions about how things would be at home and whether her family would be okay.

I did like that Kyler laid it all on the line for her. He was not a dick about it either. He knew from the first time they saw each other again (she had avoided him assiduously on any previous visit he made home) that she still had feelings for him. My impression was that if she had actually moved on, he’d have walked away (broken, sure but he wouldn’t have forced himself upon her in any way). There is something powerfully attractive about a man prepared to do whatever it takes to win his girl and I liked the tone of the story which was all about how they were meant to be and no-one else could ever do. It was sweet and sexy and I liked it.

BUY IT:
AMAZON