Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - The Striker

Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

The Striker by Ana Huang

4 reviews

witcheep's review against another edition

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

The story is good, but I'm still unsure whether I like it or not. I've read better sports romances, and both better and worse Ana Huang's books before.

This is a millionaire romance that wears a mask of a sports romance. The sports play a surprisingly small (but not insignificant!) part in the plot, even though it is the starting point to create forced proximity and the cause of small vonflicts throughout the plot. However, the plot revolves more around the personalities, struggles, and the insta-lust romance of Asher the football superstar and Scarlett the ex-ballerina.

Usually millionaire romance and insta lust are hard tropes to win me over properly, and this book joined that group of reads. It was hard for me to relate to or like the characters much, because their lifestyle and some characteristics feel so unrealistic it jars the reading experience.

Every now and then the MCs showcase how entitled they are in life regardless all the struggles they have gone and are still going through. Asher being a star athlete has made him filthy rich, and his lavish lifestyle of almost thoughtless luxuries feels so foreign – especially when the main couple seems to mostly consider it something normal in life. They have a casually entitled and selfish attitude in life (it seems like money really can fix everything when you don't have to think about it at all). Scarlett goes as far as calling herself a hypocrite who likes rules as long as they are hers.

The couple has many good qualities as well, such as Asher being very thoughtfull towards those he cares about (

and seems like he is a mind reader in bed, doing everything just right with barely any communication

🙄) and Scarlett being a stubbornly resilient person who encourages resilience on others too.

Content Warnings

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

Content Warnings

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.

Content Warnings

dcnireads'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
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

this story had a lot more flaws than i'm usually able to put aside in an ana huang book. i dont particularly like how certain character conflicts and motivations were handled in this one writing wise, but that kinda stuff i can sometimes ignore, though mostly in the romance genre (im a just a girl and i like love and spice and whimsy, idc). so in all honesty and seriousness, i did have a lot of fun and i'm not ashamed to say my rating is mostly carried by the fact that i just really missed love stories and i'm glad to be back reading them again.

so if you're looking for a simple, quick paced, fun, spicy, romantic read with angst and emotional stakes that aren't too heavy? maybe just to pass the time? then i think you'll be satisfied with this one. 3.75 stars. as i like to say quite often in my reviews, im a simple reader without too many specific standards. this book entertained me more than enough, there just wasnt anything else that special about it.

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