REVIEW: Writing the Playbook – Lemon Hollow #1 – Andrea Rousse

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The guy who broke my heart years ago is offering to be my own personal “book boyfriend” for research purposes … what could go wrong? Everything.

My brother’s star baseball player friend has come to stay on our family ranch. Sounds fun, right? Well, maybe it would be, but the problem is … he’s not just any guy. He’s the first boy I loved and the one who shattered my heart. He may be pretending to act like the swoony heroes in romance novels, but there’s nothing make-believe about how he makes me feel. When we both fall into character easily, the line between fiction and reality quickly blurs, leaving me to question if he could be my real life happily-ever-after.

Maddie is a writer suffering from a severe case of writer’s block, so she puts her computer to the side and goes to surprise her boyfriend Buckley, a sports reporter at his job, with lunch.

What she finds is Buckley having sex with his assistant putting a cherry on the top of an already lousy day. She packs up and heads to her family ranch in Lemon Hollow where her brother lives to hopefully find some peace.

Liam is a major baseball player who made the mistake of fighting live on TV during a game with another player from his team. Now he is suspended for ten games and he, like Maddie, heads to the one place he feels most at home, the Ashford Ranch in Lemon Hollow.

Maddie and Liam have a past, a past where she had sex with him, and he walked away telling her it was a mistake. He broke her heart, and she wound up with his brother Buckley who also unfortunately, broke her heart.

Now the two, Liam and Maddie, find themselves in the same cabin on the ranch. Her brother Austin is getting married soon so staying with him and his future bride is not in the cards and staying in the main house with Maddie’s mother is also a no. The two find themselves stuck together, each trying to make a go of it.

Liam has always loved Maddie and regretted leaving her and now he has a chance to get a do over which he hopes will finally put the woman he loves back in his arms. Maddie has also missed Liam but refuses to go through more pain when he leaves her again. They do manage a truce and settle for being friends.

Maddie and Liam both have dysfunctional families; Maddie’s mom has never hidden her need for men and her desire to tell her children what to do, although they don’t listen. Liam’s parents were horrible, fighting all the time, even putting him in danger when their fights went too far. Unfortunately, none of them changed even when Liam’s parents divorced.

This book was filled with sadness with parents who just won’t quit trying to interfere with their children’s lives and children who keep trying to keep a relationship with them even when it isn’t possible.

A baseball player suspended with a second chance at love and a writer afraid to open her heart again. Austin is Liam’s best friend with problems of his own, but I won’t go into it in this review.