MY RATING
Only I have to say CD Reiss have knocked me on my ass with this one, she builds the anticipation, she lures you in with promises, she entices with dirty talk from a baseball player quoting Shakespeare… And she DELIVERS tenfold the desire she creates .
Perfect ass.
Perfect arms.
Perfect swagger.
They call Dash Wallace the Diamond King.
He’s the hottest commodity in baseball and in the bedroom.
When he runs the bases, every woman’s eyes are glued to his stunning body and a smile that puts the night lights to shame.
I’m no queen. I’m a regular girl with a regular job. I just watch him on TV and from the bleachers, season after season.
Girls like me grab a guy like that one in a million times.
My number just came up, and he is as spectacular in bed as he is on the field.
But there’s not a woman in the world who can distract Dash Wallace from the game. Not for a moment. Not even me.
Until the night I do. And everything changes.
Author : CD Reiss
Title : HardBall
Series :
Number of pages : 200
Publisher : Flip City Media
Release Date : Marchth, 2016
Genre : Contemporary.
If for some reason—like me— you’ve been pushing off reading HardBall by CD Reiss, it’s my duty as a romance reader to tell you to FUCKING READ IT already. Don’t be like me. Don’t let it sit on your kindle or bookshelf a second more.
Clear enough for you? Too harsh? #SorryNotSorry
You guys, I’m in book HEAVEN!
This book kept me up ALL night! And I’m reading on paperback, so that says something to my level commitment—infatuation with Dash and Vivian—, you know how hard it is to read a paperback in bed… (Especially when you share said bed… Sorry, “honey”.)
No but seriously, a librarian that might become my favorite heroine ever, a baseball player with enough layers to strip and keep you tied up… Imperfect and multi-faceted characters making for the PERFECT romance story. I’ve just struck gold with this book!
I really appreciated the fact I wasn’t served a total librarian cliché, you know the naive and clueless book nerd? I don’t really mind them I guess, but I could really appreciate how genuine Vivian was as a woman. Not posing and filling the whole librarian persona I was expecting her to have. Not too nice, not a pleaser either, not a faker. Just Vivian. I’m crushing hard on this woman.
And Dash. Sigh. I kind of want to keep him for myself. I guess I’m late to the party, reading this a year past release, but that man scored the top of my book boyfriends shelf. (It does sound creepy to think I have them all lined up on a shelf… lol)
But seriously, that man has issues and quirks. And I guess I do like me some tortured hero because all I wanted was to read that man and figure out how to fix him.
I wanted to figure him out. So many sides of Dash Wallace. None of them I’d want to get rid of. Especially not his dirty talk.
Okay I’m a goner for dirty talk and Dash had it JUST RIGHT.
And of course… the sex. But not only. Not just that. The level of anticipation, the complicity between Vivian and Dash, the playfulness mixed in the steamy scenes took them to another level. Was it hot? Sure. Sizzling even. But above all it felt authentic and not just a demonstration or a formula to get the reader panting.
Only I have to say CD Reiss have knocked me on my ass with this one, she builds the anticipation, she lures you in with promises, she entices with dirty talk from a baseball player quoting Shakespeare… And she DELIVERS tenfold the desire she creates .
Probably my favorite by this author yet. And I really thought nothing could top her Songs of Submission series .
I wish I could share some of my favorite quotes with you but I’ve read it on paperback, a signed one at that, and I didn’t dare making any highlights… Also, I think I was too engrossed and eager to get to the next page, and the next one and… to bother marking anything down. I just had many “I should really highlight this” moments. This book was a delight to read, I just LOVED it. Adored it even.
This review is brought to you by Camille, a.k.a “The Angry Reader“.
I love her reviews and we seem to share a common taste for awesome books and blunt reviews. Check out her blog at The Angry Reader where the motto is “Painfully Honest Book Reviews“!
It’s rare for me to give 5 stars to a contemporary romance these days. In the beginning when they were new and shiny I adored a lot of them. But now something has to stand out – to speak to me. This book did that. Dashiell Wallace did that.
It’s a sports romance. And the baseball aspect is well done. I’m a big sports fan, and I appreciate when an author gets the nuance. Baseball’s details (and kinks) were smoothly done.
What made this book shine for me was Dash‘s ADD. His rituals. The chapters from his POV. His thought-pattern was familiar and fascinating. He felt weird, real and imperfect. I am completely in love with him.
Vivian wasn’t a slouch. Smart and focused. Not a bitch but far from a doormat. She stood up for herself. She made good decisions. She felt like someone I’d like to know.
The story was great – moved at the right speed with some fun little hitches. And I adored the writing. All those Shakespeare quotes. The literary flirting. Smarter than your average sports romance.
I am so excited and so nervous to read another book by Reiss. I want more of her fantastic writing, but I’m worried I won’t feel the same without Dash. Either way this is going down as my favorite romance this summer.
EXCERPT
“HardBall” by CD Reiss. ©
Excerpt “HardBall” by CD Reiss. © – all right reserved
I turned to face Dash. He’d shaved for the event, and though I liked the scruff he’d had before, the angles of his jaw looked extra sharp without hair to soften them. His tux brought out the width of his shoulders, and the open jacket let me see the flat perfection of his waist. I didn’t want to think about the rest. Not while I had to form words.
“You look…” His eyes scanned my body, over the liquid matte gold dress to the matching shoes. My neck broke into prickly heat. “What are the words?”
“Nice? I look nice?”
“You could conduct electricity in that dress.”
I laughed. Part nerves. Part space filler. Part delight over an obscure fifth-grade science reference.
I flattened the gold fabric against me. “I was going for more insoluble.”
“You’ve just out-scienced me.”
“I help the kids with their homework after school.”
“Where’s your date?”
“A friend,” I said, answering subtext instead of content. My subconscious was leaking all over.
Wait. He must have asked for a reason. He must be here with someone. I scanned the room for a five-foot-eleven triathlete with a PhD.
“I don’t want to keep you from your date either.”
“I came with my sackmate.”
My brain skipped as if tripping on a crack in the pavement.
Sackmate.
A friend with benefits. That was my first thought.
Up on deck—the consideration that a casual sex buddy made him kind of available.
In the hole—the actual definition of the word sackmate.
A shortstop’s second baseman. Double-play partner. Jack Youder.
Not a sex buddy unless you’d just hit a grounder to short with a man on first. Then you were screwed.
It had taken me forever to unravel that, and he watched the process, probably wondering if I knew what he meant. I couldn’t stand in public with a baseball god and look like a deer in headlights.
“What are you going to do when he goes free agent?” I asked.
He stiffened, unamused and seemingly unimpressed.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Dash said.
“You’d have a hard time finding a mate as good to sack.”
I was trying to lighten him up, and it worked. He smirked and looked at me the way he had when we’d met at the park. He looked at me as though he was trying not to. As if I was a magnet’s north and his gaze was stuck on me like magnetic south.
“You have an interesting way with double entendre, don’t you?”
“Don’t let it fool you. I’m a librarian. You don’t get more boring than that.”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They wanted to touch Dash Wallace, but my brain wouldn’t let them, and the energy it took for mind to command matter drained me of any conversational material. I’d never felt so stupid in my life.
“Is there someone in your life, Apples? A guy type?”
I shook my head.
“Is that a ‘no’?”
I nodded. God almighty, what was wrong with me?
He bent toward me, and I could smell his cologne. Pure heat and crackling ozone. Spice and musk and something that could only be described as lust in a bottle.
“Was that a forward question?” he whispered in my ear. His breath was warm, and with every syllable, I knew how his tongue and lips moved to make the sound.
“No. I don’t think so. I mean, I guess that depends on what your intentions are. If you’re just curious, then it’s forward and inappropriate.” You’re babbling. “But if you’re trying to come on to me, it’s probably one of the first questions you should ask because a gentleman would establish consent.”
You implied he wanted to come on to you.
I wasn’t the feisty heroine I imagined I was. The whole conversation had no place in a romance novel, or even life. I was supposed to feel his heat and still parry/thrust with clever comebacks. I was supposed to push him away while I beckoned him closer, all leading him to chase me until I could no longer run. For every hundred times I had been told by my father and my friends that romance novels were fake, life proved it true two hundred times.
“I found the word for that dress,” he said.
God, I hoped it wasn’t vintage or something. “Tell me.”
“Molten.”
My insides went as molten as my dress, and I saw him and what he was saying in a narrow tunnel. He liked the dress—and my body in it.
This was the best night of my life. Ever.
CD Reiss is a New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon bestseller. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn’t pick up, she’s at the well, hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master’s degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere, but it did give her a big enough ego to try her hand at books.
She’s been nicknamed the “Shakespeare of Smut,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she’s some sort of braggart who’s too good to chop a cord of wood.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
$4.99
Grab on AMZ
FREE
Grab on AMZ
$3.99
Grab on AMZ
$1.99
Grab on AMZ
FREE
Grab on AMZ
