The Long Game

The Long Game by Elena Armas, 376 pages

Adalyn Reyes is a career-driven woman who is set on succeeding her father as owner of the Miami Flames MLS team. But when a video of her beheading the Flames mascot goes viral, she's on damage control. Or she thinks she is, until her dad banishes her to a dinky town in North Carolina with shepherding a youth soccer team as her new job. When she arrives she finds just-retired MLS goalkeeper Cam Caldani coaching the ragtag team of 9-year-old girls and while the two immediately get on each other's nerves, there's definitely something more between them.

There's a degree of willful suspension of disbelief required in reading any romance novel, and this one really pushes that boundary to the brink. However, if you can get past the MASSIVE COINCIDENCE of a famous soccer player hiding in the same tiny town as an exiled MLS executive (and some other stuff that I won't reveal here), it's an excellent example of an enemies-to-lovers romance novel. Gotta say that the supporting characters (especially the kids on the team and their goats) are what make this book particularly charming. Recommended for those who are waiting for Hallmark Christmas movies with bated breath.

The Bucolic Plague

The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites became gentlemen farmers/Josh Kilmer-Purcell 305 pg.

After reading Linda's review, I could not resist this book. I can certainly understand the desire to "get away" from the big city and go back to nature, I'm just not sure this is how I would go about it. Let's face it, farming is a huge physical undertaking and being weekend farmers means you don't have a lot of spare time to lay about which is more my speed. Economically, these guys traded high pressure corporate jobs for an even higher pressured corporation that they developed to make a living from their farm and mansion. No wonder the stress did not exactly bring them together. After toughing it out for a year and losing their jobs in the economic melt-down, the post script seems to show them doing better and even landing their own tv show. Maybe this is the natural next step for your average drag queen. - Christa