Off the Record by Chelle Sloan

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After finishing my binge of Sophie Lark, I wanted a little bit of a change of pace before getting to some book club books. Instead of just going full mood reading, I looked at the prompts I had remaining for the Romancing Summer Challenge and tried to find something that fit one of the prompts as well as met something for my other summer challenges. And also fit my mood. After looking at several options, I decided to go with Off the Record by Chelle Sloan. She is a new author to me and is a fairly new author, having published only 3 books so far (and one more later this month). This is the first book in her Nashville Fury series. I was able to apply this to the sports romance prompt for the Romancing Summer Challenge, recommended by Shelby prompt for the Summer of Swoon and reporter prompt for the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo!

Our heroine is Sadie, a reporter covering the Nashville Fury football team. She's the only woman reporter on the team, but is also one of the best. She's known as asking the best questions that really cause the players and coaches to think and not just be the same ones always asked. She is really focused on her job. One morning she runs into Hunter, former college player and now coach, before his interview for the Offensive Coordinator position. She breaks the story as they sit across from each other at the same table while flirting. They are immediately attracted to each other and so starts their fun romance. 

This was such a great, light read. I couldn't put it down and stayed up late to finish it. Sadie had me laughing and I even teared up a couple times. I liked is that this is a romance with a coach and not a player. You don't see coach romances too often in the sports romance genre, but I feel like there's more here lately. They both know that there is a lot at risk if they move forward with their relationship, but I loved how emotionally mature they both were most of the time. Even though secretly dating isn't necessarily the best plan, they do want to get to know each other first and if they can make it through the season with no mishaps on either end, let their respective bosses know. That way they'll have proof that they can do it without damaging either of their ethics. 

I also loved how even though they'll keep something to themselves sometimes, if it was something related to their relationship they both pushed to be open and honest. They could read each other so well and were really attuned to the small details of each other. A lot of the times I'll see that type of connection one way, but it was nice that it was on both ends. Did I see the third act conflict coming? Yes. It went down a little different than I expected, although I still assumed that Hunter would assume the worst about Sadie. It did bother me how long it took him to realize he was wrong and had really hurt Sadie. I don't think his grovel was quite what I wanted, but I did like that there was mention that they had a conversation in private afterwards that was hard, sad but overall good for them. I just wanted to actually see that conversation. This was also steamier than I expected. It was decently written, but there were a couple times where it seemed the foreplay was more explicit and then the full intimacy acts were glossed over. In later scenes it was more explicit. Not that it's bad that it wasn't explicit, but it just seemed odd to switch halfway through the scene, but then later go full bore. 

Overall I loved this book and am excited to see there's a second book in the series set around Sadie's sister Bethany and Davis, a fellow coach. We see Sadie and Hunter set them up in this book and I'm intrigued to read theirs despite it having the surprise baby trope. It's not a trope I usually enjoy. I'm definitely going to keep my eye on Chelle Sloan and will definitely try her other works. If you enjoy sports romance, definitely try this book!

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Off the Record, Chelle Sloan, 5-stars, 0 days, eBook, 322 pages, published in 2020