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Book 21 - The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson

I kind of hated this book, because it had so much potential but I ended up rage-reading for a lot of it. Not exactly what I’m looking for in a romance. I was tempted to do a Goodreads score of two stars, but I rounded up instead of down, because it was so well-written, if you ignore the plot. Sigh. I just wanted to smack the “heroine,” Daphne. She’s going through a tough time after a divorce and gets drunk at a baseball game, and ends up heckling the local team’s third baseman, Chris Kepler. He hears her and breaks down right on the field. She reaches out to him via IG to apologize, but forgets to include that she was the heckler. They start texting, and having a relationship, but she doesn’t tell him her identity. She ends the texting relationship as they end up working together IRL, and hooking up, but she still doesn’t let him know she’s the person he was texting. It felt like there were many opportunities for her to come clean, and no real benefit to keeping the secret, but pages and pages of rage-reading went by without her saying a word. 

The irritating thing is the book still could have worked if she told him much sooner, and then spent more time dealing with the fallout. It felt unnecessarily drawn out, from a plot perspective, and made me really not root for Daphne. It’s never a good sign when you wish the hero would just meet someone else. I came close to not finishing, which I almost never do, but I’ve have the new Emily Henry book on deck (keeping with the baseball theme), and this book was just irritating me. 

Why three stars instead of two or one? Why did I stick it out? The writing was really good. The dialogue was realistic and fun. Daphne has an interaction with her sister-in-law about a baby hotline that made me laugh out loud. I would absolutely read another book from this author. I would never recommend this book. (6.5)

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