Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsSurprisingly funny. Great heroine. It kept me turning pages
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 25, 2017
I read a lot of romance novels and find that many no longer keep my attention: same old stock characters, stock plots, stock tropes. Nothing much new and interesting. The Catching Kind was a 99 cent Kindle special with an author I was unfamiliar with so I wasn’t expecting much. However, this breezy little novel kept me turning pages. It has the stock tropes of “fake girlfriend” and of a rather ordinary girl getting involved with a rich, sexy famous guy. But, it worked!
Our heroine is a 5 foot, five inch young adult romance writer of no great fame, pretty but not beautiful. Hates being in the limelight. He is an aging (at 30!) baseball player needing to rid himself of his reputation as an irresponsible womanizer. I didn’t quite buy that he needed to pretend to have “settled down” with a good woman in order to increase his appeal to young female fans. This is supposedly because his big sponsor targets that demographic. Why would a company like that sponsor a man like him? But, that was the biggest stretch of credulity for me in the novel and I could go with it. (Oh, well, maybe there was also a little stretch that Connor was really such a great guy. But, hey, this is a romance novel after all.)
I will warn you this book contains no sex scenes if that is important to you. Almost no swearing either. This is a first person narration with only one point of view---Hailey’s.
Why I liked this book a lot.
Humor. This is a very funny book. Hailey has a great, dry sense of humor. And, best of all, the humor here rarely comes as a result of her making a fool of herself. I don't like stories where the humor is primarily related to the heroine doing stupid things. But, I laughed a lot at Hailey's droll wit.
Likeable and believable characters. Connor is honest, straightforward, kind and charming. You sense he has to constantly live a role of charming nice-guy with his fans and that being “on” all of the time causes him some tension. But he is also not really a phony. His professional charm is actually just a somewhat ramped up version of his natural personality. He is definitely a “guy” though, saying and doing some dumb “guy” things, that is to say, he doesn’t appear to be really a woman’s personality in a man’s body which happens occasionally in romance novels.
Hailey is also believable and I have so many reasons why I liked her---and the book---I will mention each separately.
1. She had none of the serious self-esteem problems that many heroines have. Yes, she is nervous at the possibility of losing her heart, and sometimes frustrated, because she is strongly attracted to Conner though she is not his usual type, which is tall, beautiful and famous. So, she really doesn’t expect to ever have a HEA with him. In many ways, she doesn't even want to end up with him because she doesn't like the limelight and has misgivings about whether he could ever be faithful. Which is realistic. But, she knows she is pretty, a good person and a good writer and that many men find her attractive. So, she has good self-esteem.
2. She is not so selfless as to be a saint, another characteristic of many romance heroines---a characteristic I simply cannot identify with. Hailey is a good person, kind, and caring but she also looks out for herself when she needs to. She does not spend her life doing only things for other people.
3. She is smart, strong and honest—but seldom blunt to the point of being hurtful nor wildly impulsive. She is a woman like many of your friends.
4. Her career is described in a level of detail that makes it real and her passion for it is a strong part of her personality. Too often, we only hear of the heroine’s career activities and involvement in passing. The details here make it, and her, real.
5. Internal thoughts. She doesn’t spend a lot of time focused on Connor’s body parts which, to me, gets old really fast. And, she spends about the right amount of time thinking and worrying about the fact that she really is beginning to like and care for him, not to mention lust after him, and she can never have a HEA with him.
Character development. I enjoyed the way the protagonists changed over the course of the relationship. Yes, the ways they changed are what we would expect in a romance novel. Still, I thought it was pretty well done.
So, what didn’t I like?
Well, we never really learn why Connor is so commitment phobic. Hailey senses there is a reason but we never learn what it is. There were really no big surprises in the novel but it was “fresh” nonetheless. And the story ends a little too abruptly for me---and probably many others. I am ambivalent about the fact that sexual tension is not extremely high here, though there is definitely some sexual tension. What we feel is more longing than lust. Which is good in that the MCs are at least as much attracted by the other as a person as they are lusting after the other person's body. I'd like the two to be equal but that may be expecting too much. And, novels where it is all about physical attraction often get old and repetitive quickly.
But I definitely recommend this one so buy it while it is still 99 cents.
