booking_along's reviews
1903 reviews

well written, realisation and fantastic characters. 

i don’t know what i expected -i have only recently read a short story from this author as a first sample before and really enjoyed it- but this was so much more than i expected. 


it was a romance - but it also was so much more. 

it had a lot of topics especially surrounding abuse in relationships -even more specifically emotional and verbal abuse- and as someone that has experienced those situations i found it very well done. 
and that is not a spoiler it’s a selling point! 
if you do abuse, especially within a romance story? do it well or don’t do it! and this author did it fantastically! 


i also enjoyed that this was a age gap romance with the woman as the older partner and how that was not treated as anything special. because it shouldn’t. if all parties in a relationship adult and consenting? who cares? they have to be happy and not you so if you wouldn’t be in a relationship with a larger age gap, fine don’t. 
this book did a good job with how it was done and how the characters  behaved. 


i really enjoyed Alexis and while she could be a bit too focused in small things that should feel as important to her as it was - it was understandable why she focused to heavily on them. 

i am not saying it something every abused person does but especially emotional and verbal abuse can make you almost obsessively focused on the smallest details and make those tiny details seem extremely important. sometimes that can be because it makes the abused feel more in control (not being able to control a lot else at least that detail is as it should be!) or because of the smallest thing isn’t as it should be the abuse will be worse.

 

so i understand why some people didn’t love her or found her annoying but for me she made sense. and she evolved and learned. 

daniel was wonderful. i do like how he was written too and honestly he felt almost too “perfect man” kind of character -always willing to help, always willing to do what needs to be done, step up…- i didn’t mind that. 



the story itself was well done, had nice pacing and i found the build up and typical romance plot thing

aka third act break up

very real and understandable and it made sense. 


clearly i enjoyed this book a lot and can’t wait to continue on and i know the next book of this follows alexis best friend but i would also love to get a book from the perfective of a person from the small town. get more of that small town feel and the people there. 


so happy i read this and really had a fantastic time! 

can’t even formulate the words for this right now. 

beautifully written, impactful story and memorable characters! 

filled with heartbreak and hope, love and loss and hate and grief and dreams. 

a story that has LGBTQ+ characters, chronic illness rep and so many other representations and moments that are beautiful!

sadly this didn’t work for me.

and interestingly it wasn’t the heavy focus on squash (the sport and where the titel comes from) or the heavy topic of grief with as many can understand is not always something you can read or connect with in every book that has the topic. 

those things were okay. 
i did think that the grief was done relatively well and how it was told with how long and how deeply affected grief can leave you. 

and while i personally have no interest in the sport nor do i seek out reading about any type of sport , i also didn’t mind it overly much even if it was very heavy handed and felt like the author expected the reader to not only have a basic understanding of squash as a hobby but as a profession as well (which i didn’t even know was a thing before this book which says more about my disinterest in professional sport than anything else). 


my biggest issue with the book was that it felt like it didn’t have real characters or any actual people and lives and their stories worth being interested about in it. 
which might sound mean but what i mean is that the characters didn’t feel real - they read bland and more like a wage sketch of a character than a fully formed and developed character that a reader can learn to understand or want to get to know if nothing else- and and with that everything about this story felt just as blend and distant as those characters. 

this book might have talked a lot about grief and what i can do to a person, a family and lives in general but i never felt that grief. 
i didn’t feel the loss and pain and desperation of having to keep going and trying and feeling like its not working but time just keeps on ticking anyways. 

maybe i am just heartless or the  author purposefully kept the reader at a large distance so that the characters felt more like silhouettes than anyone specific or real. 


i don’t know. 

i do know that it wasn’t for me and i didn’t enjoy this book. 

oh well i hope others have a better experience with it. 

This was too much with too little in all ways possible for me. 

The idea was good and it could have been an interesting story but the short story formt didn’t allow for enough build up, anticipation and interest to build for me to care. I didn’t care what the characters went though or why they  did it or any of that befreundet didn’t know the characters nor did I feel like I wanted too. 

The plot itself could have been good but it felt to rushed and to compressed to really get there and actually be good. Again could have been well done with an actual longer story but in short story format too many things happened to rapidly one after the other while at the same time never really being explained enough for me to want to see that much action happen.


Clearly this didn’t work for me, sadly.

If you are looking for mindless action and don’t mind not getting to now anything or anyone or really getting a clear picture of any questions - go for it. 


Other wise? Maybe not the right story for you.

this was a well written story. 

this story was a lot more than i expected it to be and have for such a short story. 

it had a lot of growth in different areas and trying to figure out things: life, love, surviving and living. moving on and letting go with and without forgetting. 
trying to learn to live again and learning what that means. 

it was a well written story that i think is worth a read! 
  

this was a nice story. 

i don’t know if the translation or the original story was written in a way that it sometimes read a little clunky but either way the overall book was nice. 


i liked how the story was told and that we more or less just get this very specific time frame of the lives of the characters from this book and how the shop helped them during a time they need it. 

a fantastic dramatization of the book series. 

i personally think that it works better if you have read the entire book series before and then listen to this abridged version instead of doing a whole reread since  i do think that the is abridged version while well done does miss some fantastic moments from the full story itself. 

but as it is it’s fantastic. 

its very well read with a great cast of voices and nice characterizations. 


definitely a recommendation!