Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - The Striker

The plot was good. I was expecting a slow burn throughout the entire book but that was only the case for the first quarter of the book where there was obvious tension between the protagonists. The middle was slightly boring as there weren't many interesting events that happened like the first part of the book. The plot kind of stalled a little and remained there for a couple hundred pages which I'm not a huge fan of. The method of resolving the conflict between the two protagonists caught me off guard and the ending was a little underwhelming. Overall, I really enjoyed the beginning and certain parts of it, but the ending and middle is slightly lacking in depth.

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ashleyelizabeth's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful

5.0

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cdoubet's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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annadelreads's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

“I’ve been here since day one, darling. I was simply waiting for you to join me.”

My audible credit always goes to Ana Huang books, but sadly, this one ain't really my favorite. It's a story about a ballet teacher that's going to be the teacher to these two athletes, her brother and her brother's nemesis, where at some point, Asher ended up being the only one left to train since the Scarlett's brother has an emergency. Anyways, it was fun seeing the two of them actually go from strangers to somewhat friends to lovers. You can definitely see the tension between the two of them. Asher apparently is not the usual athletes who sleeps around and has a total fuck boy era, so you can really actually fall for him together with Scarlett.

The only downside and the main reason why I did not truly love the book is because it was nothing special. The relationship between them is already something I have read in different books but of course, different profession. The conflict was also very typical. I was just seriously enjoying the story and nothing else.

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hjb_128's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

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beckyyreadss's review against another edition

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challenging emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I wanted to read this because I love football and the idea that I could finally read a sports romance about a sport where it was called football instead of soccer and had British humour and romance, it was supposed to be my cup of tea. But this is the biggest let down of 2024 for me. I'm not going to lie, this is about to be a rant rather than a formal review because I have a lot to say about this.

This book has two points of view. The first is Asher Donovan, we have met him in the Twisted series and the King of Sin series, and he is a living legend, the star of the Premier League and the greatest football in the world. But his reckless antics and recent team transfer has caused a lot of controversy, and when his feud with his rival-turned-teammate costs them a championship, they’re forced to bond during the off-season cross-training. Surviving the summer shouldn’t be too hard, until Asher meets their new trainer. She is beautiful, talented and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t take his mind off her, but he is his rival’s sister and completely off limits. The second point of view is Scarlett DuBois, and she is a former prima ballerina whose career was cut short after a car accident that left her with chronic pain. She is now a teacher at a prestigious dance academy, but still haunted by the ghosts of her past, the last thing she wants to do is spend the summer cross-training Asher Donovan. She swore she would never date a footballer again, but when her brother leaves town to look after their dad, she finds herself thrown into dangerously proximity with the charming striker. The training, she can deal with. But falling in love is out of the question especially when he’s the only person with the power to break her heart.

I liked the side characters, Carina and Brooklyn saved this book from being the 2nd book I was going to give a 1 star ever. They were the only ones with their heads on straight and the only one who was cutting through all the bullshit that happened in this book. Adil as well was a golden retriever and gave bright moments throughout this book and the fact that he was wanting the team to have some sort of brotherhood outside of the field by trying to arrange a book club was so sweet. Also, Christian Harper didn’t show up to save the day like he has done for the past 7 books.

This book did not need to be 500+ pages, everything happened within the last 100. I wanted it to have plot and to show the season in full and not just the last game of the season last year and the last game of the season this year, which is how it starts and ends. There are a total of 3 matches in 500+ book over the year. This fake team was supposedly the best team in the premier league, do you know how many games they would have played in a year not including international dates such as friendlies and the euros or the world cup? If they were in all competitions and got to the final of every competition, that’s 73 games. We saw 3 and 1 of them was a charity match. We heard about 2 more games and that’s only because Asher was sidelines so it was things like “the team won against Tottenham” even if you are injured, most players go to the games to support their team, the only time players don’t go to away games or home games if it they physically can’t due to injury. I would have been happy reading a 500+ book if it shows more of the games and the brotherhood and the training and the traveling to away games. Even for Scarlett, I have no interest in ballet, but besides her doing the training which was literally “we trained today” or “I had class today” there was no intense ballet sagas. Like with other sports romance (Flawless, The Deal, Icebreaker), you end up wanting to root for the team and then wanting to buy their merch for a fake football team in a fictional book, but I don’t know how they did besides be told that they won.

Scarlett and Asher had no chemistry. We got more chemistry from Vincent and Asher after they punched Scarlett’s ex-boyfriend and sorted out their difference at the hospital. I think I would have actually preferred for this to have been a gay romance, it would have been more interesting that what we got. It was very bland and rushed again it could have been a slow-burn with the tension building if Vincent stayed around but the second he goes, they end up hooking up like five chapters later, and then spend the next thirty having sex and hiding from paparazzi and lying to everyone and then five chapters having the third-act conflict and getting back together. The smut we did get got boring after a while because it was all they were doing, I get the first time they kiss and do all the other stuff they have to go into details usually because we’ve been waiting for it to happen, but this book it happened so quickly that we got a lot of smut with no plot that was skimming it towards the end because I was getting sick of it and it was boring me. As always with Ana’s books, the third act conflict just wasn’t needed, but we knew Asher was going to break his promise and then he wondered why she ended. Like he was so boring and stupid. Scarlett then had a revelation that she was pissed and broke up with Asher for being reckless, but she was doing the same thing and then poof Asher shows up to show that he’s not going to be reckless anymore and happy ever after, and the brother approves. Not that the brother’s approval should stop them.

This book could have been soooooo much more. With Scarlett’s chronic pain and Asher’s trauma from losing his best friend which again gets resolved within the last ten chapters. It felt like Ana had watched one premier league, thought it would be good to write a book about it, listened to English Love Affair and Ghost of You and try to mix Ted Lasso with the Game Plan and it just didn’t work. I’m low key pissed as well because I was rooting for this so much again, should have been my cup of tea – romance books, premier league romance, British humour and none of it was there. I need an author to re-do this concept and for me to not actually hate it because I can’t believe this is the book that we’ve got to represent to EPL and if you think this is going to get girlies to watch the footie like Lauren Asher’s dirty air series did with Formula 1, it isn’t going to happen.

I’m actually half tempted to cancel my pre-order of The Defender, because I don’t know how it could get better or worse than this.

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lujisa's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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erwikka's review against another edition

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funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

After the shit week I needed a fast trashy romance and this completely fit the bill. I really loved Scarlett and Asher and as a previous soccer player and ballerina this was right up my alley. I thought the author did really well with those aspects and you could tell she looked into the subjects. The banter was fun and my favorite part. The spice was good and even though I think 595 pages is way too long for a romance book it didn’t feel that long at all. Overall it a fun can’t put down romance and it was completely what I needed.

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