Review: A Whole New Ball Game

A Whole New Ball Game by Lauren K McKellar
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Zoe is a nurse in a hospice which gives care to sick children when they're not in hospital, she plays Aussie Rules football in a league on a Tuesday night but it leaves her feeling unfulfilled and wanting more. She has applied to work for Nurses Abroad caring for sick children in Africa, carrying on the family tradition as her mother is .

Sawyer is an Aussie Rules player for a men's team, the Killers. He recently split up with his long-term girlfriend Ava, when he finds out that Ava has been dating his best friend, and team mate, Braden he is so distracted he walks straight into the path of a moving car, Emily's car. Swayer tries to be funny but comes across as a bit of a douche and Zoe pegs him as a typical self-absorbed neanderthal footie player. But when Sawyer and his team mates visit the centre where Zoe works to meet the sick children Zoe starts to see a different side of Sawyer. When one of Zoe's favourite patients, Emily, says that girls can't play Aussie rules Zoe is determined to prove that girls can do everything and asks for Sawyers help to try out for the the Women of W.A.R.

Training together brings Zoe and Sawyer close, but she's marking the days until she can go to Africa and he has difficulty in trusting women after Ava's betrayal.

This book made me angry, in a series where the heroines play in the first women's Aussie Rules league Zoe spends more time as Sawyer's WAG than she does playing Aussie Rules football. All the WAGs are portrayed as vapid and mean, even Sawyer's sister Kristy is portrayed as mean. Zoe is that cliche of cliches a children's nurse. There is also a ridiculous sub-plot where Zoe's boss asks her to explain her job to his son in preparation for his son taking over the centre.

I liked Sawyer, but I found it strange that he could have dated Ava seriously when she came across as such a shallow, spiteful, plastic woman complete with fake nails and cocktail dresses to watch a match.

To me this read like a writer who didn't have the confidence to make a female sportsperson the centre of her book, so copped out and made the man the star. There was more sex than Women of W.A.R.

Fail for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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