Tiebreaker by P. Dangelico

Posted June 29, 2019 in review Tags: 3.5 Stars, forced proximity, second chance

Tiebreaker by P. Dangelico
Pages: 281
Length: 9 hours 5 minutes

Genres: Contemporary Romance
Source: ARC
Narrator: Iggy Toma, Kasha Kensington

Goodreads

All is fair in love and second chances

Professional tennis star and everybody’s darling Maren Murphy is going home. Unfortunately, going home is the last thing she wants to do. She doesn’t know what’s worse, being named the executor of her grandfather’s estate, or having to deal with her grandfather’s business partner, Noah Callahan.

That devil’s spawn may have broken her young, tender heart, but this time it’s advantage Murphy. If anyone’s calling game, set, and match, it’ll be Maren.

Re-match on.

Noah Callahan is a screw up. Well...he used to be a screw up. Bad boy reputations, however, are not easily shed. He’s been a successful business owner for over a decade. You would think people in his hometown would’ve forgiven and forgotten already, but alas no. Until his one shot at redemption walks into his office.

Maren Murphy is the only woman he ever loved––and the only one he purposely drove away.

She’s vowed to hate him for all eternity. He’s vowed to love her forever. Can a second chance be the tiebreaker?

Tiebreaker is my first P. Dangelico book and I was impressed! I snagged this one in audio because the narrators are 2 of my favorites (Iggy Toma and Kasha Kensington). But honestly, what made me snag this book was the heroine. Her name is Maren. Maren is such an usual name and I simply love it. However, I haven’t always loved it. Why? Because its my middle name and when I was a kid, I thought it was weird. Now, I kind of wish it was my first name! Its fun and unique! But, back to the story.

Tiebreaker is a second chance romance between two people with a long past. Maren and Noah were the best of friends. She fell for him when she was 10. But, they were just friends all through school; Noah was a few years older. Then, they become more than friends. Seemingly just as quickly, Noah breaks Maren’s heart and she takes off to pursue her tennis career. The reader is slowly given tidbits of what happened between Noah and Maren so you are piecing it together as the story progresses. Maren still has so much pain over what Noah did. These two are now forced to work together as a condition of her grandfather’s will, and Noah wants to win her back. However, he doesn’t actually talk about what happened, and what his life is like now. Maren makes assumptions and he doesn’t correct them. I wanted to kick him until he opened up. It was maddening!

Forced proximity combined with second chance gives Tiebreaker a lot of angst for sure! I loved their little Oklahoma town and the people there; they were great supporting characters! I think the story would have been better if there was more from Noah-maybe more explanation of his ‘plan’ to win her back or why he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. It made the story angstier than I thought was necessary; however, I hate angst and miscommunication, so this could be just a personal pet peeve.