Book review - On the Defense

[Viviana Kingston]

Title: On the Defense
Author: Misty Rogers
Genre: Sports Romance
Rating: 3/5
Page count: (ebook) 412 pages
Category: Self-published, apart of a series but can be read as a standalone
Age rating: Adult
Warnings: “inappropriate” content, swearing
Synopsis:
When the public hears about a football team’s mistreatment of their cheerleading squad, activists in Detroit stage a protest lead by Erin, a fiery redhead whose best friend is one of the cheerleaders being mistreated. Their only request: the football team should be accountable for their actions.

Lucas, a star player for the football team, gets caught in the crossfire of the protest when he takes the bait from Erin, losing his cool and commenting on the issue despite his higher ups instructing him not to. Tensions get worse when Lucas realised he may be fighting for the wrong side, and that he may just be falling for the redhead that made him realise it.

Stuck together to face the problem, the two of them form a team, but their lives are destined to come crashing down. The only real question now is, will they pick up the pieces together?

Comments + opinion:
In the real world, I’m an arc, beta and book reviewer, and this book is one of many I come across to review. It was published in October this year and today was the review day assigned to me. I read this book in a few hours today, it can be binged very easily I must admit, but for a normal reader who goes at a normal pace it should take maybe 2 or three days with distractions, perhaps more depending on how you read (everyone has their own reading style and pace).

One thing about the story is that it’s faced paced. In a few chapters, it gets to the main issue of the whole cheerleading mistreatment and it gets solved pretty quickly too, and the remaining chapters describe how Erin and Lucas go from “enemies” (they not actually enemies but they initially don’t see eye to eye and are on opposing sides) to friends and then to the anticipated lovers. Just to be clear it is not an enemy to lovers story, it may look like that, but they’re more of forced allies than anything else.

In my opinion, it is a sweet romance, it starts off weirdly though. Lucas has two nicknames for Erin: Red and Knuckles. The “Knuckles” one is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen and is also the most realistic thing - in real life I’ve heard people come up with some weird nicknames for each other but I didn’t expect it to quite pop up in a romance book.

The only thing I may complain about is the pacing - I do like a slow burn, but other than that, it’s a book I’d recommend for a read just based on the character interactions being cute sometimes, and the fact the Erin is a female character that represents (not well though) girl power!