Celeste Bouchard, English Professor at Glassell University, a small Southern California college.

Lisa Tobias, Women's Basketball Coach at Glassell

This is a sensuous, sexy slow burn on a college campus.

Celeste is an English professor, elegant but socially shy and almost totally inexperienced at dating. She sees Lisa at a faculty function and likes what she sees, but is hesitant because of a bad experience she had with a fellow faculty member. Celeste and Lisa find themselves thrown together to solve a problem with a mutual student. Misfires ensue.

Lisa is trying to get hired at a bigger university, and works toward raising her profile, all the while falling for Celeste.

There are misunderstandings and false starts, with each woman protecting herself against certain heartache, as their future together looks shaky.

How will Lisa chase her lifelong dream and keep her life from going off the rails?

The peripheral characters add nicely to this story. I really, truly liked this book and I think everyone who is a KC Richardson fan will, too!

This review of Taking a Shot at Love by K.C. Richardson is unfortunately going to be a mixture of good and not so good comments. The book is a sports related romance about a college basketball coach and an English professor meeting and falling in love. The two meet when they team up to help a student they both have, but there are problems that could keep their budding relationship from happening.

If I had to describe this novel in one word, I would have to use the term average. The idea of the tale is a good one. I like the butch/femme combination of main characters, and the basketball/sports theme. The characters are well developed and likeable. I was also pleased to see that they are both written as mature women in their late forties. We don’t see enough of characters in that age group as romantic interests. The sex scenes are also very well written and quite steamy.

My problem is mostly with the story itself. Though the idea of the book sounded great in the blurb, the tale itself lacked substance. There was very little to keep my interest beyond the sex scenes. I actually ended up skimming a good bit, especially through the first half. The story became a little more interesting in the second half. The plot is also very predictable which only adds to the lack of substance.
I’ve agonized over how to rate this book. For me, it is really a 2.5 rating, but since I have to pick a whole number, I decided to leave it at 2 stars. Though I can’t personally recommend this particular novel, I can tell from the good parts of this book that Ms. Richardson is a very capable author, and I will be looking for more of her works in the future.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.

Rainbow Reflections: http://rainbowreflections.home.com/

Should I stay or should I go? Should I stay for love or pursue my lifelong dream? Being a sports fan, I thought I would "take a shot" at this read. Celeste Bouchard, college professor, well-liked, respected, but has self-confidence issues that can fluctuate from moment-to-moment or day-to-day. Lisa Tobias, college basketball coach with one goal in mind, coaching at a division I school. Both women are likable as they work toward their goals. Celeste has a very unique and cool way to deal with her confidence issue. A shout out to her! Lisa appears to be a solid coach as she challenges are self and her players to be the best they can be on and off the court. I appreciated the voices of the secondary characters as they encouraged and supported Celeste and Lisa. I liked that Celeste and Lisa were in their 40s and knew what they wanted in life especially Celeste.

I didn’t care for this one much. I personally love basketball so I was optimistic that I’d at least enjoy that aspect of it, but honestly the coach was a stick in the mud and I found myself not caring much about the basketball aspect of it. The professor was too defensive, and her hobby was unbelievable, even despite the recent Super Bowl half time show I’m not buying it!

I'm gonna start with something that most people probably couldn't care about, but, I do. Northeastern isn't in 'Central Boston'. I mean, maybe technically it's in the center of the city or whatever, I've never looked at a map that close. But, it's in the Back Bay. And, yes, Fenway is also in the Back Bay, but, so is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (it's famous, got some things stolen from it), the Museum of Fine Arts too, as well as so so so so many other college campuses. Also, another small thing that annoyed me, Lobster Rolls, that's more a Maine thing than a Massachusetts thing.

The story itself is about Lisa, a woman's basketball coach and Celeste, an English Professor. They both work at the same University, and come into contact when one of Lisa's players is having a hard time in Celeste's class.

Unfortunately I liked very little of the novel. Lisa is a jerk for some of the story, and I hated how Celeste was written for all of the story. A lot of the dialogue and some of the descriptions were very stilted too. And then there was how all the characters were written. It was so so off. Celeste and Lisa were supposed to be in their 40s, Lisa was written like a teen and Celeste like maybe a 20 year old? Emily, a student who was supposed to be 19 or so, was written even younger, like a 10 year old. It was all so weird. And there was just so, so, so much telling and so little showing in the narrative too.

I hate giving one star to books, especially to lesfic, but, this. Ouch.

I was given this ARC by Netgalley on behalf of Bold Strokes Books.

Taking a Shot at Love by K.C. Richardson is set at a small California college. The main characters Lisa Tobias, the women’s basketball coach, and Celeste Bouchard, an English professor meet at a faculty party at the beginning of the school year. When one of Lisa’s players is struggling in Celeste’s class the two reconnect. Though initially put off by Celeste’s extreme and immature overreactions the pair eventually find themselves drawn to each other.

This book had a lot of individual elements I like small college setting, sports, a look at body image and trauma of an abusive relationship. However, the individual pieces just didn’t come together in a way that was satisfying to me. Celeste was overweight her entire life and didn’t have her first relationship until her late 40s (after she lost weight) and it was an abusive relationship. While I liked that the book talked about Celeste’s insecurities with her self-image I would have appreciated some reflection that she was always worthy of love (regardless of whether she lost the weight). I will say the author’s choice to have Celeste pole dance to stay in shape was unique and actually did a lot for her character.

Otherwise, I wasn’t sure I felt the chemistry between the characters (except during the sex scenes which were very, very good). Celeste was often immature and I had to keep reminding myself she was nearly 50. I also found the writing a little stiff, with a lot of telling, especially using dialogue to deliver backstory that both characters talking would know.

Overall, the components were great, the sex scenes were great, but this one just wasn’t for me.

I RECEIVED AN ARC COPY OF THE BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY AND VOLUNTARILY LEAVING MY REVIEW.

THIS AUTHOR HAS BEEN ON MY RADAR FOR A WHILE NOW AND FINALLY I GET TO READ ONE OF HER BOOKS.

CELESTE IS AN ENGLISH PROFESSOR AT GLASSELL, A SMALL PRIVATE UNIVERSITY AND ALSO DOES POLE DANCING TO KEEP HERSELF FIT. LISA IS A BASKETBALL COACH AT A SMALL PRIVATE UNIVERSITY. SHE DOESN'T WANT A RELATIONSHIP AND WANTS TO ADVANCE FORWARD WITH HER CAREER.

I AM ON THE FENCE WITH THIS ONE. IT WAS NICE TO READ A BOOK WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTERS ARE BOTH 40+. I ENJOYED SOME OF THE STORY AND AT OTHER TIMES I DIDN'T. ROUND ABOUT THE MIDDLE I LOST INTEREST IN A FEW CHAPTERS. I LIKED THE CHARACTER OF LISA BUT CELESTE TOOK ME TIME TO LIKE. THE SECONDARY CHARACTERS WERE GOOD. JACKIE WAS A RIGHT BITCH. THE STORY LINE WAS JUST OK FOR ME. IT WASN'T A PAGE TURNER AND TOOK ME AN EXTRA DAY THAN I NORMALLY TAKE TO READ A BOOK THIS LENGTH. ANOTHER THING, IT GRATED ON MY NERVES THE AMOUNT OF TIMES THE AUTHOR WROTE THE CHARACTERS NAMES WITHIN A PARAGRAGH. IT WAS VERY REPETITIVE.

IF YOU LIKE WORKPLACE ROMANCES AND/OR SPORT THEN THIS COULD BE THE BOOK FOR YOU.

I love a good sports romance. Taking a Shot at Love is really not a sport romance though. *Smile* Anyway, this one is about Lisa who is coaches the woman basketball team at a small college. She wants to get back to division I and it going to do everything in her powers to get back there. Celeste works at the same college as an English professor. She has sworn off dating co-workers because of her crazy ex who is stalking her.

So what did I like about this one. Well, I liked both MC's for the most part. Celeste was a tad bit annoying with her jumping to conclusions, but I do understand why she did. I also liked the sex scenes. Richardson was very creative here and I enjoyed each and every one. I think that it is important to show older characters who enjoy sex and also in a romance novel. I really liked that Richardson had these two older women falling in love. Actually, the overall story line was fine, but it sort of fell flat for me. I think what the entire story is missing is that spark. It was just never really there for me (besides the sex)..

I am going to rate this at 3.5 stars. Mainly because of the steamy stuff.

I have to be honest here, this was mind numbingly formulaic. So much so that I couldn't really immerse myself in the story nor could I enjoy the characters, they were just so bland while being bloated with genre stereotypes. Another aspect that made these characters not very enjoyable was the fact that 80% of the story focused on their insecurities and these insecurities kept causing childish misunderstandings. I know this is par for the course with lesfic but it was a bit much with the repetition. Now on to the more enjoyable things in this book, the characters had great chemistry and that translated to hot sex scenes. Also the supporting characters were enjoyable and somewhat relevant to the storyline. So overall I'd rate this story as so-so.

Insecurity.

Celeste is a university English professor. She has only had one relationship in her life that she had to leave because the woman ended up being abusive.

Lisa is the basketball coach at the same university. She doesn't have time for relationships because she is focused on her team doing well enough to gain her some interest from Division 1 schools.

A major theme in this book is the insecurities that Celeste has with her body image. She was overweight through childhood and never belonged to any group and nobody wanted to date her. Now, she has taken steps to get more exercise. In fact, she has a very interesting way of getting her exercise in. And while she generally feels good about where she is now, the self doubt makes frequent appearances.

I didn't really connect with the writing in this one. It felt oddly specific about mundane things. There was a lot of long exposition sans dialogue. The book alternated between Celeste and Lisa and the author would take us back in time to experience something that had already happened from the other point of view. It felt very repetitive and made the story drag in spots.

Overall, this book had an OK premise but I couldn't connect with the characters and it failed to capture my interest.

I really enjoyed KC Richardson's writing in this story. This story is a bit of an opposites attract story. Celeste Bouchard is an English professor who has dealt with weight issues and discouragement from it all her life. As a result, she takes up pole dancing and has lost a lot of weight. Still, the teasing and hurt of past experiences have left her cautious of others, especially those she works with. She has had one relationship in the past with a co-worker who mentally abused her, but continues to try to pursue her to get her back. Lisa Tobias is the head women's basketball coach at the university. She isn't looking for a relationship because she is striving to make it back to Division I as a coach. She throws herself into her work and doesn't have time for much more. The two character's paths cross when one of the girls on the team is struggling in English with Bouchard and Tobias goes to visit her to ask for help for her star athlete.

There is a lot of miscommunication and jumping to conclusions that occur in this novel, and on the surface, they look like they may be artificially there just to advance the story. As I thought about it more, though, the reactions the characters have are very realistic for those that have been through hurtful relationship or ones where there has been a lack of trust. I found the story to be very well done and very engaging throughout. I loved the pace of the story and of the relationsihp between the couple. You know the ending before it comes, but that in no way takes away from the enjoyment of the story. Sometimes it is good to sit down with a book where you know what is going to happen, but you just enjoy the ride to get there. This is one of those books.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

No one would guess that icy – but fair – English professor Celeste Bouchard is also a talented and sexy pole dancer. Celeste took up pole dancing in her late twenties as a way to keep fit after growing up overweight. Her body benefited from it and so did her self-confidence. Yet an ill-fated relationship with another teacher scared her away from anything more than a careful friendship with her colleagues. Until she meets Lisa Tobias, the super hot and trustworthy basketball coach.

Taking a Shot at Love is a classic nerd/jock opposites-attract story, full of instalust and miscommunication. The writing is okay, not exciting but not terrible either, except for an overall bad case of superfluous words and one scene where I got completely lost between all the right hands and left hips and all that. Also, I may have a faulty memory but not to the point that I need the author to remind me of the MCs names multiple times in the same sentence.

This is the kind of book I would have been glad to read twenty-five or thirty years ago but by now I feel like I have read the same story seven or eight times already. We’re lucky to have so many good novels to choose from these days, compared to when I came out, but it also means I have less patience for average (or less-than) books.

I received a copy from the publisher and I am voluntarily leaving a review.

The plot had me very interested in reading the story about Lisa and Celeste. This book started wonderfully, in my opinion, but somehow, as it was nearing the end, the weaker it became. It promised angst and excitement, but slightly felt short of it... Having said that, there are lots of good sides of this book - lots of history explaining on both characters, especially Celeste, and if you're a go for nice, cute romance between two women in their forties, this is the book for you.

This is an easy read, somewhat cookie-cutter, but a flavour of cookie I like.

The plot moves without too much angst. There is a bit of tension, however the conflicts seem contrived with characters overreacting and storming off only to resolve the problem quite easily with only a few words. The story is told in third person and flip-flops between them quite a bit. In the start, the POV switch was more delineated and each section was longer, then it just kind of changed randomly without warning a few times and finally came close to head-hopping.

The two mains are older, in their forties, although Lisa seems much younger at times. Celeste, on the other hand, constantly mentions how she’s almost fifty. Both of them have BFFs who play wingman and provide the prerequisite banter while always being right and unconditionally supportive.

There isn’t a lot of drama, the mains didn’t have a whole lot of chemistry aside from considering the other hot. The intimate scenes were tasteful and well-written except for the inclusion of the word, “saliva” which is my own personal squick so YMMV.

I thought there would be more basketball, but the amount that we get is enough for a non-sporty person like myself. We only really meet one of the players, although she’s an interesting side-character.

I loved the idea of this book, and it started off okay, but it was hard for me to get through, and I almost didn’t finish it. 

Celeste and Lisa were both sweet in their own ways, and I enjoyed seeing them get together, and I liked the overarching themes in the story. However, the author did so much more “telling” than “showing,” that it seemed to be paragraphs of inner thoughts with a teeny bit of dialogue here and there. Even that would have been fine, but the dialogue felt stilted - I never fully felt invested in any of the side characters, and there was a lot of development with some of them - and even how Celeste and Lisa spoke  sometimes felt off. 

I just couldn’t get into this book. 

Trigger warning for mentions an abusive (more emotional than physical) relationship.

ARC received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is my second Richardson book and while I thought it was better than [book:A Call Away|37793438], I didn’t love it.

This is set on a small[ish] university campus and the mains are Celeste, a professor in the English department, and Lisa, the women’s basketball coach. Celeste loves her job, has a good friend on staff and recently broke up with a co-worker who spread rumours about her and is now resistant to the idea of dating at work. Lisa also has her BFF working with her but dreams of heading back to the ‘big time’ of a division 1 school, and so doesn’t want a relationship since she’s likely to move away.

The two end up being thrown together due to a variety of circumstances (some more contrived than others), one of which involves a student taking Celeste’s class, Emily, who also plays basketball. Emily has her own issues and confides in both Lisa and Celeste but while I assumed something would come of this and she’d get some sort of resolution, she basically just serves as a way to bring the two leads together or advance their plot lines.

Celeste also used to be overweight and now does pole dancing and swimming for fitness. Lisa is intrigued about Celeste from first sight and this continues even though the first handful of discussion they have end in disagreements due to Celeste’s almost overwhelming insecurity. As someone who has also been overweight, I sympathised to a point, but that got old pretty quickly.

There’s also the inevitable to and fro about Lisa wanting a more impressive job/wanting to work somewhere else, and as if that and Celeste’s insecurity weren’t harped on enough, Celeste’s ex Jackie also wants her back (though why she had this change of heart doesn’t really come across). She’s a one note ‘baddie’ and doesn’t add anything to the plot. There’s also mention of rumours Jackie spread about Celeste, but it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge so I’m not sure why it’s such a big deal outside of emphasising that Jackie is a bitch.

The two mains spend quite a bit of time together and I liked that Lisa was entirely positive about Celeste and her body image. I also enjoyed both BFFs and their relationships with the leads. The main issue I had with this I also had with the first book, there’s something about Richardson’s writing style that doesn’t gel for me, I couldn’t put my finger on why, but it bugged me. I found some of the situations unrealistic (e.g. them both being in Las Vegas at the same time), and a lot of the dialogue seemed stilted. I also knew how this would end pretty much from the start, so it’s not like there was any real angst towards the end when that part cropped up.

Overall, it just wasn’t for me. 2.75 stars rounded up, because I liked it more than the last one of hers I read.

If you like a good sports romance, this is for you! I love collegiate basketball and football, so I was really looking forward to this. There's a lot going on here - it's a workplace romance that takes place on a small college campus in a big city, and the mains have differing views on staying. Celeste loves the atmosphere and the smaller class sizes, while Lisa views the school as a stepping stone to the big-time. Both mains are in their late 40s, which is refreshing. Lisa has never really had time for a relationship, and Celeste is recovering from huge body issues when she was younger and her only relationship was abusive. KC Richardson writes nice hot love scenes, and the ending is satisfying.

Lisa Tobias is the new women’s basketball head coach for a small university in California. Her dream job is to move up the coaching ranks and reach the professional level, so no love distractions allowed during the basketball season. Celeste Bouchard is an English professor at the same small university, Glassell University. Having broken things off with another professor and suffered from the fallout, Celeste swore off dating anyone from the university. That is, until she meets the coach.

The story is narrated in third person point of view, alternating between Celeste and Lisa. Also worth mentioning, the mains are in their mid to late forties. Celeste was also overweight and dealing with self esteem problems still. I appreciate the author featuring a non traditional main and showcasing some of the concerns that come with it. Things like being self conscious and not being able to be confident on many settings, but especially in a relationship. Celeste also uses pole dancing as a physical and emotional form of exercise. I thought the choice of exercise was unusual and a great way to work through all her insecurities.

Unfortunately, I was not able to connect with the characters the way I like to. The first actual interaction was a misunderstanding that left me looking for more from one of the characters. The idea of wanting to be friends when they seemed to be at odds with each other was strange as well. The point of having a friendship in place sort of failed as communication broke down once again, but lust won anyway. I wish there would have been more positive interactions before they got together. The end seemed to come a little abruptly and decisions made on the spot contradicted when only a day before the path and dream were clearly going in a different direction. I do not want to spoil anything, although story was very predictable, so readers will understand as they progress through the story. 3stars

ARC generously provided to me by BSB via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ah man, I loved everything about this book! Such a fun, small-town romance. Celeste and Lisa worked so well together, and it was refreshing to read a book about an older queer couple (most of the romances in general I read are about people in their 20s, which I also am so this book was a good change of pace).

Lisa is a basketball coach in small town. She dreams of working in a bigger university or going pros she doesn't plan on staying. She definitely didn't plan on meeting someone that will derail her plans.

Celeste is a professor at Glassell University she exactly where she wants to be after being at bigger university. She loves the small town life.

Celeste is hesitant getting involved with someone she work with again because the last time she did her ex Jackie spread rumors about her.

When they meet theirs a mutual attraction but they both decide to be friends with benefits because Lisa isn't planning in staying and Celeste isn't looking for something more. But that plan goes out the window when their feelings start to become deeper and top it off Celeste ex Jackie isn't taking no for answers.

This was a good read the secondary characters Athena and Olivia was interesting as they support Lisa and Celeste.

I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and voluntarily leaving my review.