ARC courtesy of Netgalley

Angel Gomez, a single NYC mother working hard to support her asthmatic son and to earn her nursing degree, gets drawn into a fake relationship with a Yankees' pitcher whose career is in jeopardy due to injury (he needs a reason to explain why he's visiting a medical clinic; she's a student working on her practicum there). The set-up sounds great.

The first big annoyance is that the baseball references were completely unbelievable. A star pitcher is NOT going to get "fired" for having an injury. A major league team would have doctors either on staff or doctors with whom they work overseeing an injured player, and most likely some contractual language obligating him to work with said doctors rather than running off to a shady doctor on his own. And a pitcher would have been down in Florida for spring training, along with the other catchers and pitchers, not in NYC. And he would have been at the ball park every day, rather than chasing around after Angel...

What is really upsetting here, though, is the romance, or lack thereof. Most of the novel shows Angel and Duke being suspicious, doubtful, and many times outright cruel to one another; none of the good feelings, longing, or even romantic tension one reads romance for exists in Angel and Duke's difficult relationship. One can admire Angel's determination to make something of herself without liking her approach to romance. After Angel thinks "Then she knew. She'd lost all respect for Duke. As that respect receded like a wave, it also wiped out her desire to be with him," I'm all "you go, girl." But alas, she kept the door open, and he and she kept being cruel to each other, which made me lose all respect for both of them.