3.5 Star
Is going back Robyn’s
only way forward?
American-born Robyn
Matthers is going home. With her dad in hospital, his roadhouse in ruins and
the ice hockey team slipping down the league, she needs to take charge. But
does she have the strength to do it?
Cole Ryan is a hockey
player on a personal mission. He’s tall, dark, hot and Robyn’s noticed! But can
she trust her feelings - or his? And what will Cole do when he finds out the
truth about her?
With an ill father, a
trailer trash step-mom and ex-boyfriend Brad desperate for another chance, does
Robyn have time to contemplate a relationship? Can she start again? Does she
really want to? And can two people really fall in love in three days?
Kaley - 3.5 Star
There’s a lot going on in Taking Chargeand it easily could have been too drama filled but, luckily,
author Mandy Baggot is able to find a balance and delivers an enjoyable novel.
Bear with me while I start off with a mini rant that has absolutely
nothing to do with the quality of the book. I am Canadian and that means hockey
is a part of my life (I’m totally playing into stereotypes here but that’s ok).
It drove me absolutely crazy that Baggot kept referring to the sport as “ice
hockey.” I know that sounds ridiculous but, to me, “ice” is redundant. Up here
there’s one kind of hockey and all those others (ball, field) need to be
identified. Also, the little glossary at
the beginning of the novel was kind of neat but to define NHL? I’m pretty sure I
knew what that was when I was a kid. This is totally a personal opinion but I
had to let you all know that I wanted to scream every time I read “ice hockey”!
That being said – I loved that hockey played such a huge part in this novel. There
aren’t enough books that feature hockey players and this one was able to have
the sport be an integral part of the plot but not overtake the main story. Oh, and
I loved that no one knew where Henrik, the random European, was from!
Robyn was hard to connect with. She had a wall up when it
came to the people in her life and, unfortunately, that wall came up between
her and me as well. She had such a tough exterior and wouldn’t let anyone close
to her. I knew, as Cole did, that there had to be a reason for her prickliness.
Once I found out what had happened to Robyn (and I definitely wouldn’t have
guessed it) I could understand why she hadn’t come home in nine years and why
she threw herself into bringing back the diner and hockey team. It was
unfortunate that I couldn’t get a good sense of Robyn right away but eventually
I was able to better understand her and relate to her a little bit more.
In some ways I found it strange that Robyn could fall back
into her old group of friends as she did. She had been away for almost a decade
and had had little contact with most of those people. At the same time, it was
awesome to see how she could go back and it was like nothing had changed. It made
me think about my own group of friends when I was sixteen and what it’d be like
to hang out with some of them now (as I’m the same age as Robyn). Making me
think and relate things back to my own life was a definite plus for this book.
Love that!
Overall, I enjoyed reading Taking Charge. Mandy Baggot created a tomboy main character that
was fun to read about. While I did figure out the big twist well before everyone
else did I was happy that the rest of the novel was not predictable. I think other chick lit lovers would enjoy
this one as well and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more of Baggot’s books!
Thank you to Mandy Baggot for our review copy!
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