Misadventures With A Rookie by Toni Aleo [Review]

Misadventures of a Rookie by Toni Aleo
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I am not new to the Misadventures series and have truly loved the books I have read in the series so far! So, when I saw this one was a sports romance, I JUMPED on it as a blogger to get to experience my second favorite sport and as a chance to read Toni Aleo (as she is a new-to-me-author). After MMA, Hockey is my favorite sport, so it was a no brainer, right?! I won’t give you a summary of the plot, after all, that’s what the blurb is for but read on for my likes and dislikes of this story.

You’re probably wondering why I rated this as 3.5 stars, and I’ll get to that. Only, I don’t like to knock a book/author before I discuss what was good about it. So, let me start with the good. Misadventures of a Rookie falls into the enemies-to-lovers trope and that made it more appealing to me overall. The combination of a sports/enemies-to-lovers trope honestly had me expecting to absolutely love this story! And I did enjoy it overall. Toni Aleo wrote a good story. I didn’t come across spelling or grammatical errors that screamed at me and for that I am extremely grateful. Although I often read ARCs, sometimes those are uncorrected, and bloggers aren’t warned ahead of time. As a reader, I can ignore that… as an editor, they SCREAM at me like a neon sign in the middle of nowhere. So, getting an arc well ahead of the release date for a book that’s lacking spelling and/or grammatical errors is cause for celebration! This Misadventures book was very much ready for readers to enjoy! The plot is good, although I did feel like the pace dragged a bit for the first quarter of the book or so. Since Toni Aleo was new to me, I was willing to keep reading to see the story unfold and I am glad I did. The story was comical, and the romance was hot. Also, Misadventures With A Rookie was written in duel perspectives and this always gets brownie points in my book!!! I love getting into both characters heads. Ultimately, I liked the story. I just didn’t love it…Now for the not so loved parts of Misadventures With A Rookie that didn’t work for me… First, the book didn’t WOW me. It was good, not great and compared to some of the other books in this series, it was not my favorite. I’ve read probably six of these…maybe seven so I feel like I am not just being a judgy McJudgeson here! lol. Then there was the character of Gus. I really struggled with him. He was arrogant, which is fine with me, but combined with the player aspect, I felt like he was an ass. Also, his personality didn’t jive for me with the upbringing he had. I have three sons and not one of them have Gus’s personality and they are being raised in a very similar manner to Gus. Bo was easy for me to like, she was smart and sassy! So, I really wanted to love Gus as well, and continually gave him the benefit of the doubt. But my overall opinion of him as a hero was more negative than favorable. As the enemies-to-lovers trope would imply, there was initially a lot of bickering between Gus and Bo but it stated to get old very fast for me. It felt more forced than it could/should have been. I also felt like the book needed an epilogue. It wasn’t complete enough for me as a reader.

I’d like to read another story by Toni Aleo because I want to see if I like her other books and this one just missed the mark with me. I usually give an author more than one chance unless I can’t even finish the first book. Obviously we can’t love every single book we read, and I am leaning towards Toni Aleo’s Misadventures With A Rookie as being the exception and not the rule with regard to her work.