Narrated by Kristen Sieh & Sullivan Jones
For those who don’t know, The Playbook series is based around the lives and loves of players of the Denver Mustangs, a fictional NFL team. Alexa Martin is the wife of a former NFL player so she has a lot of insider knowledge and she brings a level of authenticity to the world building. Partly because it’s been a long time since I read Intercepted and partly because I didn’t read the second book, Fumbled, some of the characters presented as familiar in Blitzed were not but overall, the story was easy enough to follow. Probably those who are familiar with both earlier books would understand the story better though. So, while Blitzed mostly stands alone, there is a flag on the play (see what I did there?).
The Mustang WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends) are known as the “Lady Mustangs” and, by book three, they have their own reality TV show, a la Desperate Housewives. One of the settings for the show is HERS, a bar which is female owned and operated and which caters mostly to women. Bar owner, Brynn Sterling, is best friends with Marley, the heroine from Intercepted, and has been adopted by the Lady Mustangs even though she’s not (yet) one of them.
One of the Mustangs is a defender, Maxwell Lewis. He’s a fine looking Black man, tall and big and built. He’s also shy and quiet and this leads him to take aaaaaages to make any kind of move on Brynn even though we know from the prologue that he’s been into her from day one.
Brynn, for her part, has had a crush on Maxwell for the same length of time, but she doesn’t do relationships and doesn’t plan on ever having children. Mostly this is about her fears about being exactly like her mother, who left her and her dad when Brynn was only 15. Brynn saw her mother only briefly about a year later and hasn’t been in contact with her for more than a decade. Brynn looks just like her though and fears she is like her mother in other ways. It takes most of the book for Brynn to work out that this is not true. (This through-line could have been more emphasised; it would have made the story work better overall.)
The brief prologue is from Maxwell’s point of view and is read by Sullivan Jones. Thereafter, it’s all Brynn, performed by Kristen Sieh. I wasn’t sure what the point of the Maxwell POV was really. It was too small to be particularly instructive. All it served to do was let the reader know that Maxwell was just as into Brynn as she was to him but that was readily apparent anyway. Sullivan Jones’ narration was brief and I was grateful for it because I was not a fan of his female character voices. The other aspects of his performance were fine but I heard enough to know that dialogue from Brynn or any others of the female cast would grate on me coming from Mr. Jones.
Kristen Sieh however was great. She had such an engaging voice and style. Brynn is very out there, snarky and funny and kind of loud (though she’s by no means the most outrageous of her crew). She’s also kind and generous with her time and protective of her heart. In addition, Brynn is kind of clumsy and a bit of a mess when it comes to things like fashion, home décor or not falling over. Most of the humour of the book comes from Brynn and the antics of the Lady Mustangs.
Blitzed straddles the line between fiction and romance, with a lot of the book being devoted to the other WAGs and the friendships between them and Brynn. The actual romance part of the book took up about 40% of the story. Maybe 50% if I squint.
There were two things which gave me pause about the story however.
First, right at the start, Maxwell is at HERS and takes a phone call. It is never specified exactly what happened on that call (something I found frustrating) though I guessed, in the end, what it related to. Maxwell ends the call by exclaiming loudly and throwing the phone across the bar. The phone barely misses Brynn’s head and then impacts the glass shelves behind her, breaking them and the bottles and glasses stored thereon. It’s violent and dangerous and way not okay. While this behaviour is very out of character for Maxwell and he does pay Brynn for more than the cost of repairs and he apologises, the nature of the outburst was so extreme that it needed a lot more explanation. It was also massively out of character so that was another reason it needed better context.
Anyway, Brynn and Maxwell do slowly become a couple after a period of avoiding one another. It takes a lot of time before they become intimate, which wasn’t really a problem, although I could have wished the romance was more front and centre to the story. I did like how they bonded over Parks and Recreation and I liked how it was shown how well they fit together.
However, the final conflict at the end of the book really brought my overall impression of the story down. (Listeners please note there is discussion of sexual assault which might be a problem for some.) Essentially, Brynn believes something a clearly not-to-be-trusted bad guy tells her about Maxwell and it just doesn’t make sense that she would. The behaviour is not the same as the violent outburst at the start of the book (although it is also massively out of character). Brynn doesn’t even ask Maxwell for his version before leaping to judgement. What was really going on was as obvious as the nose on her face. I had a number of issues with this aspect of the plot but it was beyond belief to me that Brynn would believe the worst of Maxwell and not even give him a chance to explain. Added to that, the grovel she does to get him back was deeply insufficient.
While there were many things I enjoyed, there wasn’t enough romance per page for my liking and I really didn’t like the end conflict so the story gets a C+. Kristen Sieh nailed Brynn’s character so well and she was such a pleasure to listen to that overall I’m counting this a win.
Kaetrin
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