Red Zone (Daniels Brothers 2) by Sherri Hayes

Hello to all,

 i won't be long because i'm really out and i'm not sure how long the connection will last.. i should be in bed the never ending winter is taking me down with his freezing weather and snow when my flowers should start to bloom.. it starting to get depressing. Fortunately they are always good books to keep you happy as long as you stay warm^^ ( i love the fireplace so much this year)

So i wanted to post this earlier but life happened so you get it today ( better late than never). As you can see i'm following my goal of discovering the subgenre of sport romance. When i've discovered this book book newly released i knew i wanted to read it so i'm really glad i could. I'm back with football for the sport but don't worry, i got some other sports in my pile so you won't get only football or motor racing^^.

So today a sport romance mixed with romantic suspense: Red Zone by Sherri Hayes, it's the second book of a series but keep in mind that if this book is a sport romance it's not the case of the series as a whole. Books can be read out of order without problem.

Happy reading!

Publisher: The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House

Publication: 2013

ISBN:  1612131433

Genre: romantic suspense, contemporary, sport romance
Violence: mild
Language: normal
sex: strong
Public: 18+

Source: won

Short description from goodreads :

 After a case ended badly for Rebecca Carson, she’s losing her mind sitting around her apartment waiting on her superiors to allow her to return to work. Since she was a teenager, the only thing she’d ever wanted was to join the FBI. Now that dream was in danger.

Gage Daniels has made a pretty good life for himself. A nice house. A career he loves. As a professional football player, he’s used to getting almost everything he’d ever want with just the snap of his fingers. This includes women. A well-timed smile is usually all it takes to attract the opposite sex, especially in Nashville.

When a stalker threatens Gage, the team owner calls an old friend, Rebecca’s ex-partner Travis Hansen, to help protect his star quarterback and find the person responsible. Hansen offers Rebecca the job, and she jumps at the chance. It’s work, and it will get her out of her apartment. How bad can it be?

Posing as Gage’s girlfriend, however, isn’t as easy as it seems. The man is relentless. Rebecca must work to protect Gage while staving off his advances. She’s there to do a job, nothing more. The last thing she wants is to be another notch on a hotshot athlete’s belt.

As the stalker continues to up the ante, Rebecca finds it harder and harder to keep her distance from Nashville’s star quarterback. He isn’t what she expected in one of the city’s most notorious playboys. Now all she has to do is keep him safe until they can find his stalker, and hope she doesn’t lose her heart in the process.

My opinion:

          As soon as I learned about this book I wanted to read it because it has one thing I love and one I was looking for: suspense romance and sport romance…together these things made this a book to be read for me and I was delighted to win it during the blog tour.

This is the second book of the Daniel Brothers series but it can be read as a stand alone without difficulty which I really appreciated. As we learn about Gage, we also discover his family a little but nothing is amiss and I would be happy to read book 1 even if I started with the younger of the brother in book 2 first.

Now like I said I enjoyed this story even if it wasn’t my favourite either but I will come to that later. First let see what was good or wonderful.  I really loved how Gage was trying to make Rebecca crack her walls. They were really funny together. Gage is arrogant sometimes full of himself but he is also really dedicated to his team and sport. When he is practising he become a different man and show how reliable he can be. He isn’t bad but when  suddenly he find himself forced to live with Rebecca he decide to make things hard on her so it could be fun for him… not really kind but understandable in a sense and he wasn’t never cruel.

Rebecca has been really damaged by her childhood and I feel like we don’t know the entire story still. Sometimes she reacts like she has been beaten or worse, but she only speak about attending some illegal acts and a drunken mother… I feel like something is amiss..; the way she doesn’t like to be touched, like she closes herself to the world… Perhaps it will be hinted later in the series but as it is  it didn’t feel right ( not exactly wrong but unsettling at least) She is a responsible, even too much, woman. She took care of her sister since young and the result is destroying her life. She is seeing all the wrongs, seeing how her sister is repeatedly heartbroken and thus

She doesn’t even try. I understand that but it also make me think…. When Gage immobilise her to get answers…the result should have been violent in the sense she must have been freaked, panicked no matter what he was doing and trying to break free… but no she panics a little, gets distracted and worse…she obeys? That didn’t feel right to me.

The plot is well done and I enjoyed it even if I did guess who the culprit was (too used to see police’s investigation on TV^^;;) , the romance progresses nicely and I appreciated that she didn’t wield immediately and tried to stay professional. Really it was enjoyable but they are others details that bothers me at least a little…for example the ending. I appreciate the happy end really I do but I still find curious that with everything that happens they aren’t any repercussions…part of me is glad there are none but another part finds that too unrealistic at least without some explanations… now that’s me and perhaps you will read it and not see at all what made me say that ( it’s great then) but perhaps you will too^^. It doesn’t makes the story bad far from it it’s just that I think it could have been even better

 I would be happy to discover the rest of this series though and if you want a sport romance with suspense this really a good book^^, I enjoyed to see a little how a football player lived, the system for the wives and also^^ how the coach reacted when they are distracted^^. I’m not someone fan of this sport or knowing a lot about it but really it was one of my favourite part^^.

To recommend

Score:  3,5/5

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own and no compensation was received in exchange for this review

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