Sunday, January 17, 2010

Slow Heat-Jill Shalvis

Slow Heat
Jill Shalvis
Berkley, Feb 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780425233665

The Santa Barbara Heat baseball expansion team feels great about signing the best defensive catcher in the Major League’s Wade O'Riley. Clearly he is a California mellow except when it comes to the women and baseball. However a conservative sponsor expects clean family values so public relations specialist Samantha McNead is hired to pull the rabbit out of the hat with cleaning up the recent media image bashing of Wade. With their fights about his responsibilities to the club owners, fans, and sponsors; she fears the rabbit will prove dead as he continually insists he never slept with Tia who accuses him of making her pregnant.

As they fall in love, she does not trust him as she assumes he wants to make her the latest notch on his bat. While Sam is great with his dad and Wade with her nephew, they fight and fuss with one another, as the catcher who gives signals to the pitcher and infielders fails to read correctly what signs Sam is sending him even when they play truth or dare.

This is an entertaining baseball romance starring a wonderful couple who keep hitting into a Double Play every time they swing the bat. Although the plot is thin, Wade makes the tale as a modern day superstar who struggles between his great play on the field and being a role model outside the park; similar to Barkley’s commercials that parents are the heroic role models not athletes. Although the theme of a PR grunt and her clean the image athlete falling in love has been used before (see Back In Black by Lori Foster), fans will enjoy Slow Heat.

Harriet Klausner

No comments: