The Diamond Shaman Multicultural & Interracial Sports Romance
Class Act Books
July 13, 2019
229
Beto Compos, a promising baseball player, and Jessie Winters, a future Olympic volleyballer , meet at Clemson and foolishly fall in love. Their careers promise to keep them apart, preventing a lasting love. When you are twenty-one, you have not yet learned to sense disaster and run screaming the other way. After all, what’s the worst that could happen when a Cuban boy from Miami dates an Anglo southern aristocrat girl from Charleston, South Carolina?
Reviewed by: Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Review Team
Beto Compos is an up and coming baseball player who started in little league. Not a very good player when he was younger, a ball hit Beto the head and he received his first visit from Joe DiMaggio. Joe told him he would be a great player and he would be his coach and from then on. Joe coached him in his mind telling him what to do. Now he plays for his university where he is studying to be an accountant, preparing for when his career is over and when his season ends.
Jessie Winters dreams of being on the women’s volleyball Olympic team and attends the same university as Beto. When the two meet, it is love at first sight; however, the relationship comes with problems. First Beto is Cuban and Jessie is a Southern belle whose father is a doctor and mother a lawyer, not that Beto’s family is not well off since they own three restaurants. However, they come from totally different backgrounds. The next step in their relationship is meeting the parents. Beto’s family embraces Jessie, but her family can only see the problems. What if he doesn’t make it into the big leagues and the money they are hoping to one day have doesn’t materialize?
With her working towards the Olympics and him working towards getting drafted by a team, there is little time for them to be together, however, they are convinced they can make it work. The first time Jessie has to leave to train, it takes Beto less than a day to have sex with another girl. Then he has sex with a married woman with kids. Jessie also managed to have sex with one of the physical therapists and when they both confessed to what they did, all was forgiven. Beto even broke off with the girl from his university, but continued with the married woman since she worked for a large insurance company and could be his way into a career with them. When together there is no one but them and they know that marriage and kids are in their future.
This was a difficult review for me to write. I am not a sports fan at all and the first few pages of the book tell exactly what happened between Beto and Jessie. The rest of the story is a flashback. I have absolutely no interest in what is involved in making the big leagues or all the behind the scenes stuff that goes on. I always try to be fair to an author and there are times when I read a book that is totally out of my wheel house, but I have no doubt that anyone with an interest in sports and especially baseball and the ins and outs of being a big leaguer would love this book so please take my review with a grain of salt.