[Review] Lucky Bounce - Cait Nary

Summary: Ezekiel Boehm is no stranger to teaching kids with famous parents. But when the pro hockey player he’s been thirsting after walks into the Rittenhouse Friends School gym hand in hand with a tiny kindergartener, he figures he must be hallucinating. Spencer McLeod is a lot of things—Zeke’s favorite winger on the Philadelphia Liberty; a menace on the ice; a mumbling, reluctant but somehow captivating-as-hell postgame interview—but he’s not a dad. Except he is. Apparently.

Zeke can be chill about this. He can.

Surprisingly, the more time he spends with Spencer, the easier this becomes. School volunteer events turn into reserved seats at games, turn into…more. And even though Zeke is 100 percent committed to ignoring Spencer’s blush, to ignoring the way he looks in that one pair of gray sweatpants, he can’t take his eyes off him.

This can never work. Can it? (Pub Date: Jan 09, 2024)

 

Zeke finds out his new student is the daughter of Spencer McLeod, a famous hockey player, and to make things more awkward, this player is Zeke's most favorite ever. Now he can't even watch the games in his jerseys because every piece he owns has Spencer's name. But Spencer is new to parenthood and he needs all the advice he can get to fit in with the school, and that brings the two together. 

 This book has the weirdest writing style I've ever seen... I still wonder if it's me, because I couldn't find any review talking specifically about it, but I can't not mention it when it was the one big obstacle to my liking it. It's not an easy read. It's supposed to be. The deal we have with these writer is very explicit: give me a story I can devour when I need some comfort reading. But each time I tried to read this one, I'd feel mentally tired trying to keep up with Zeke's narration. 

I usually avoid reading reviews before writing mine, but since I ended up doing it, the one point in common was that people liked Zeke in the beginning but then they got tired that the book was only from his point of view. Indeed, I would have liked to know more about Spencer. I didn't feel especially bothered by Zeke (despite the mess that his narration was), he's just your usual main character in romance books, sometimes he's relatable, sometimes he's too dumb. Nevertheless, I'm sure hearing more of Spencer's voice would have contributed to deepening the plot instead of just being another fantasy of common guy meets idols of his dreams and idol seems to be into him. There were things there for Spencer to tell us. There were some conflicts that would have been more interesting with information only Spencer had. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of double povs and romances are already saturated with them, so it's not that big a loss. Better planning of when to present us with the conflicts could have had a similar contribution.

Above all, I just wish the narration didn't feel like I'm hearing a sports commentator. I think I would have enjoyed this story if the narration had left me time to sit in and breathe.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 2 out of 5.