Book Review: Drop Shot by Ella Wren

Official Synopsis:

Whimsy

Traveling the world as one of the world’s top tennis player’s assistant should be the time of my life. Except Elias Johnson likes to make my life difficult just for the sake of it. Not to mention the annoying, no good, crush I’ve developed on him. I can’t help it. Even when he drives me insane there’s an underlying sweetness to him. But it’s not like I’m going to act on it.

It all blows up in my face though when he makes one mistake too many in the press. The result? His manager demands he clean up his reputation and for us to fake date. Now, we’re spending even more time together, and Elias is suddenly looking at me like he’s not pretending anymore.

Elias

I like to push things too far. Play hard and Party harder is my life’s motto.

It all blows up in my face, though, when my manager can’t deal with the bad press any longer and saddles me with a babysitter in the form of a fake girlfriend. I’m used to spending a lot of time with Whimsy, but now that we’re spending even more time together, I can’t help but want more.

I quickly realize there’s a lot more to my stuck up, pretty dress wearing assistant than what first meets the eye. She’s sweet and sexy and I can’t get enough. This thing between us is supposed to be temporary, but I’m not sure I want it to ever end. I just know I have to convince her to take a chance on me.

All I know is right now I have a six-month PR dating contract with the woman of my dreams and even less time to convince her that I deserve forever.

Another tennis romance? Are we even shocked anymore?

Whimsy has been working for hot-headed tennis star Elias for the last few years, and even though she can acknowledge he is hot, very hot, it has always been professional between them. She is used to ordering his coffee, setting up grocery deliveries and finding the right places for him to stay on tour, and in return she gets a decent paycheck and gets to travel the world with him. When Elias's manager, Justin, tells him Elias he needs to fix his image in the tennis world, he suggests that Elias start dating Whimsy, well at least to the outside world. Whimsy isn't sure how she got pulled into all of this, but the increase in pay if they can keep the farce up a year will be life changing for her as she has been recently diagnosed with Lupus and the medicine is not cheap.

The problem is Elias doesn't know about the diagnosis or the fact she has had a longstanding crush on him since she started working for him. He also doesn't know how he is going to handle having to pretend to date someone he finds attractive. As their relationship is quickly moved from professional to romantic, Whimsy finds herself traveling around with Elias in a new light, with very little work to do. She also releases that Elias has been paying more attention then she realized, knowing her coffee order and noticing when she isn't feeling well.

As they start to figure out their fake relationship, both experience real feelings they aren't ready to address yet. So they continue to share a bed and spend their free time re-watching all the Jurassic Park movies. As the fake relationship gets more heated, and the lying to their friends gets harder, they have to figure out if maybe its time to make this all official. But after a brief injury for Elias, a scare from an ex for his twin sister and Whimsy being scared of what could happen if she lets herself fall in love, there are a lot of obstacles in their way.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was the way Elias immediately started helping Whimsy when she was having a flare-up. The way he would make dinner, help her clean up or simply just be there with her when it would happen. As someone with a chronic illness this representation means a lot to me. I also really liked that Whimsy has a white female Persian cat named Craig, the joke writes itself really.

Overall, both of the characters have a lot to learn about how they want to handle the relationship, but the fake and real one. I also liked that the character's from the first novel showed up as well, though you probably don't need to read it first to understand this one. The tennis rep itself was also really good, with the games being explained mostly through Whimsy's eyes. There is also a scene where they play together in a park, and honestly, so cute. The spicy scenes in this one are spicy, so definitely an 'adult' read.

I rated this book 3.5 out of 5 stars!

Drop Shot is out now!

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