REVIEW: Wicked Serve by Grace Reilly

"If she’s sunshine, i’m the guy who hopes it never starts raining." - Grace Reilly

Apparently, this is no. 4 of a whole series, volume 1-3 focussing on the other Callaghan siblings. As I haven’t read any of the other books, I can’t say if I missed anything in this one but, to be honest, I don’t think I have, as it’s not exactly… Complicated material.

Nikolai and Isabelle are both college athletes. While he plays ice hockey, she’s a former volleyball setter-turned-opposite-hitter who’s now looking to win back her original position. After ending their steamy summer affair, they are both looking to focus on their respective sports careers... Which they are prevented from doing because, well, plot:

For no reason other than establishing our male lead as someone of noble character (he covers for a friend), Nikolai gets expelled from his university. This makes staying away from his summer crush Isabelle (he has to because he thinks he’s a bad person or whatever) a whole lot harder, since his evil grandfather makes him join no other university than the one his summer fling attends as well. But at least Izzy is gonna ignore him because he ended their short romance by leaving without a word (totally valid in his head, why communicate when you can break someone's heart with a "clean cut"), right?

Not quite but worry not, there is still the one, unavoidable obstacle:

Even though our protagonists throw away all new-semester resolutions after basically five minutes and immediately start getting it on again, they can’t make their clear infatuation with each other public because, you guessed it, plot: One of Isabelle’s (many and super successful) brothers is the team captain of Nikolai’s new hockey team and also his mortal enemy, or something.

Of course the fact that the two men immediately apologise for the dirty pre-game trash talk that caused their feud, and soon become best friends, as well as the fact that said brother, Cooper, is actually a pretty decent, level-headed guy, still does not cause Izzy and Nik to just tell the truth because, well, again, plot.

So, right from the beginning it's clear that the big revelation to Cooper that everybody knows will happen eventually, won't actually be that big of a deal, but there’s other drama, right? Of course.

Isabelle’s got a volleyball coach who’s completely awful, apparently, for making perfectly reasonable decisions, like making Isabelle work for her position instead of just handing it to her. And Nikolai, very self-aware, very sweet, is also very traumatised by his evil Russian dad that haunts the narrative like every dead wife in every action movie nowadays. Still, he says he’d do anything for his "sunshine girl", his "little sun", hist *insert any other nickname that has got anything to do with the mentioned fix star, bonus points if it is in Russian  — Except go to therapy, of course.

Apart from that, there is also a lot of very similar sex scenes without build up, and talk about how important sports are to both main characters, even though there’s barely any actual sports content, besides Isabelle hating her coach for no reason and Nikolai missing matches and practices for, well, you guessed it, the plot.

Of course, some things are lovely as well, like the sensitive handling of men’s mental health as well as the bravery of giving us a feminist female character who loves pink, princesses, and manicures instead of being “not like other girls”. I can also get very much on board of the “simping-for-characters-with-Russian-accents” train and the depiction of healthy sibling relationships as well as representation for the LGBTQIA+ and the “sorry, I don’t want kids” gangs… Thus, the two and a half stars.

But apart from that? I’m sorry, I can deal with cliché and predictability and fluff. But I’m going to need at least some things to make up for it, and if you call a book “Wicket Serve”, there has to be at least some more connection to the sport that the book supposedly deals with.

Am I going to read volume 1-3? I'll be honest: I still wouldn't put it past me.