Blindsided by Amy Daws

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The July book for the Smart Women Read Romance Patreon Exclusive Live Review was Blindsided by Amy Daws. The genre this month was rom-com and this was the poll winner. While this is considered a stand-alone; there are connections (which I found out at the end of the book in the author notes) to her Harris Brothers and London Lovers series. I was able to apply this read to the Summer of Swoon board 2 prompt starts with the letter "b."

Our English heroine Freya is a seamstress and best friends with Scottish footballer (we're talking England here, so Soccer) Maclay. There are connections through marriage and friendship to the football players and the boutique shop she works at. They became friends over a year ago and have a lot of netflix and hangout. They like to watch Heartland together. Mac ends up dragging Freya to a party and she plays never have I ever the opposite way and ends up super drunk. Things happen and it eventually comes out that Freya is still a virgin and wants to lose it before she turns 30 in a couple months. Mac decides to help her out as a love coach and eventually sex coach.

I was really torn on this book. There were parts I really liked, but others I didn't. I'm still not quite sure if my 4-star rating is too high. I liked that Freya was plus size, but I wish that she wasn't quite as hard on herself throughout so much of the book. Even after sleeping with Mac for weeks and understanding how attracted he was to her, she still felt she wasn't the "type of girl" he would be with. There was some good conversations between them about if she's being pragmatic or derogatory to herself. Where I have issues is how much she pushed against going public with Mac. Not with the paparazzi and stuff, but just with their friend group. She felt different from everyone else and constantly was counter herself out. Another conversation I loved was when they were all together in Scotland and all the women were hanging out together. Freya came to realize that she wasn't the only one with a disparaging inner voice. It just emphasized the point that you really can't know what someone is dealing with internally based on how they look or act.

Mac was very sexy and I like how into Freya was. I did wish that they conversed more and were both patient with each other during their conversations. There were a couple moments though when I wanted him to be a little more introspective, especially since he was touted as being in touch with his emotions. Another thing I want to mention, I don't think I laughed at all during this book. It wasn't a rom-com to me. It was definitely more angsty than I expected and was tearing up a few different times in the latter half of the book. I wasn't able to participate in the show last night live since my Aunt is visitng from California, but hopefully I can get the chance to watch it this weekend and see everybody else's thoughts.

I have had Amy Daws on my tbr for awhile, specifically her Wait With Me series. I don't think it's connected to this book. Based on the list in the back of the ebook I think there's at least one more connected standalone to this and the London series I mentioned above. I'm intrigued to read her other series as well. We'll see when I get to them though. I was excited to finally try her out though. I feel like I would've felt more connected to this book if I had read the connected series first since there was a lot of what felt like fan-service for the side characters.

Have you read Blindsided?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Blindsided, Amy Daws, 4-stars, 1 day, eBook, 305 pages, published in 2019