Review: Instacrush

Instacrush by Kate Meader
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of Theo Kershaw and Elle Butler.

Theo was riding high as a hockey player until a life-threatening brain injury put him in a coma, now he's back as strong as ever but with practically no filter. Brought up by his grandmother, Theo never knew that his 'sister' was really his mother, and his father wanted nothing to do with his teenage girlfriend 's pregnancy or his son, even after Theo's success.

Elle has left the military and is rooming with her old army colleague Levi Hunt across the hall from Theo in the apartments the Chicago Rebels lay on for their rookie players. She's trying to get away from her family of grifters and give back to society, although at the moment she's just bartending at The Nest, the local where all the Rebels' players hang out. She might like watching Theo's daily Instagram videos but the guy is super-annoying, especially when he keeps helping himself to her food in the fridge.

After Elle calls him out on stealing food from their fridge Theo thinks he will surprise Levi by filling his fridge while Elle and Levi are away for the Christmas holidays, only Elle hasn't left town and a lack of clothing leads to a steamy encounter. Because this is Romancelandia of course Elle gets pregnant, but how can she expose someone as open and generous as Theo to her grasping family?

This felt like a kitchen-sink drama (the author threw every trope known to man into the book, including the kitchen sink). We've got a military-romance, sports-romance, one-night stand, secret baby, criminal parents, blackmail, single-mom, other family, life-threatening injury, etc, etc and unfortunately, for me the novel suffered. Elle's parents try to fleece Theo and then disappear, Theo's biological father tries to make contact, and then not much happens. Mainly Elle just mopes around like a whiney baby about how she's not good enough for Theo and how her family would take advantage of him, leavened by a bit of moping about how Theo is too good for her and will want to take their baby away from her.

In addition, Elle's family angst seemed very similar to that of Violet in Hooked On You.

Overall, a bit meh. Read it all before.

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