Book Review: Game, Set, Match by Jennifer Iacopelli

Official Synopsis: All of Penny Harrison’s hard work is finally paying off. At 21 years old, she’s a tennis icon in-the-making, with massive sponsorship deals and legendary status on the horizon, if she can just nail the upcoming Grand Slam in Paris. Until then, there’s no room for mistakes.

When she returns to the prestigious Outer Banks Tennis Club to train, though, she comes face to face with the biggest mistake she ever made: Alex Russel. With piercing blue eyes and irresistible charm, the bad boy tennis star is the only guy who ever broke Penny’s heart.

To keep her head in the game—and her mind off Alex—Penny leans on two of the club’s other rising stars. Jasmine Randazzo and Indiana Gaffney are both balancing exploding careers with their own off-the-court romances, and their drama might be enough to keep Penny distracted.

But as days tick down to Paris, Penny seems to always find herself across the court from Alex. She knows that winning it all means laser focus…so why can’t Penny stay away from the one guy who ruins everything?

Game, Set, Match is an adult romance novel that was originally independently published in 2013 and now being re-released. The novel itself is lighthearted, with a few spicy scenes and some interesting characters and arcs. The book is also an easy and quick read, being just over 300 pages long.

When first starting the book we meet Penny Harrison, who is working her way through the women's tennis world, slowly climbing up the rankings. At the time same time we are introduced to Indy (Indiana) who is watching Penny's match, trying to figure out if her schooling is really worth it when she could working her way into the tennis world as well. We then get to follow both players as they make their way to the same tennis club and tournament in OBX, where Penny is hoping to train for the French Open and Indy is hoping to break her way back into a world she had stepped away from a few years prior. While we focus on Penny and Indy, we also get to see the other two Harrison brothers, Jack and Teddy as well as Jasmine, another tennis player at OBX.

When Penny gets to OBX, where she will be training with a new hitting partner instead of focusing on the OBX tournament like Indy is, she finds out her partner is the one man she didn't expect to see, Alex, who was hurt in an accident in Australia after their one night stand. Penny can't help but still have feelings for Alex, even when he doesn't seem like someone who would do relationships and they both have a tournament to concentrate on. Now they spend each day hitting together, with Penny doing her best to ignore his flirting while Alex tries to show her that she can trust him.

Meanwhile, we get to see Indy train for the tournament, proving to herself and everyone around her that she deserves to be where she is. Her main competition happens to be Jasmine, who was expecting to be a shoo-in for the title this year, except now Indy has messed with that. As Indy works to find her way through the OBX club, she ends up making friends will all the Harrisons and finding herself in the middle of a love triangle she didn't expect.

One of my biggest beefs of this book, as a person who usually likes multiple POVs and wants to see different characters all at once, was that it simply felt like too many characters for the length of the story. Also, it was told in third limited POV, but it sometimes meant the POV changing in the middle of a chapter and I felt like I had to figure out who we were focusing on on the fly. I think if there was more of a 'subplot' with Indy that becomes the focus in another book, would have been better, instead of seeing both Penny and Indy go through different things and trying to keep up what is happening. On it's own, I really liked Penny and Alex's story, especially as they try to navigate their feelings for each other while also both having big goals for the next steps of their careers. I liked seeing how Penny found out that she can love more than just tennis, especially when the person with her is fully supporting her dreams. Alex definitely has a lot to get through on his own too, especially coming back from a big injury, but their training and banter was really fun.

I did enjoy Indy as a character, it was just difficult to juggle everything going on. I think having a book that was just Indy, with some limited mentions of Penny, would have made me more invested in her story, especially because she is coming back from losing her mom and has some strong feelings about her father. I think there was a lot more to dive into with her backstory and how she grows during the OBX training program.

Overall, I don't think this book was bad by any means, I just think it lacked organization, which may be left over from being published over 10 years ago the first time, especially when we have such great sports romance books out now. I do have some interest in seeing if another book is out that tells more about Indy and Jasmine, with the focus no longer on Penny.

I rated this book 2.5 out of 5 stars!

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