The Madness of March by Marguerite Nardone Gruen is a heartwarming and emotional journey that is a perfect fit for readers who appreciate stories about the transformative power of love, friendship, and second chances, and who are drawn to tales of redemption, hope, and the human struggle to overcome personal demons.

I must firstly apologise for the amount of time it has taken me to provide a review of this book, my health was rather bad for quite some time, something that had me in hospital on numerous occasions and simply didnt leave me with the time I once had to do what I love most.

Unfortunately that does mean I have missed the archive date for many of these books, so It would feel unjust throwing any review together without being able to pay attention to each novel properly.

However, I am now back to reading as before and look forward to sharing my honest reviews as always going forward. I thank you f0r the patience and understanding throughout x

There's a lot about basketball here. I'm not the biggest fan so I didn't really understand. It was well written though.

This was a hard book to get into, written all in the present tense it takes a while to get the flow and rhythm of the text. The premise was great, two talented college basketballers, one who gets into drugs and partying so much it looks like his life will be ruined. Then he meets Maggie, a lovely girl who, if he can keep clean for her, could save him. The plot reads like a stream of consciousness of a life of a couple. So many things happen to Paul, Maggie and our other basketballer Nick and everything is told in so much minute detail. The characters don’t seem to get impacted by what happens to them - drug taking ‘oh I forgive you’, physically assaulted ‘oh I’ll be fine’, your ex girlfriend stalking me ‘oh she’s not important’, I found it hard to empathise with what almost seems like a list of stuff that happens to people rather than a book to get engrossed in and characters that I wanted to like.

Absolutely fantastic story about love, friendship, the college experience and basketball. Paul and Nicky are basketball stars of the team. Paul meets a girl that introduces him to drugs. Nicky is concerned he is headed in the wrong direction. Then Paul meets Maggie and everything changes. She is the love of his life, yet Paul fears his previous choices will cause her to leave him.
This was well written and a fast read!
Thank you Netgalley for complimentary copy.
Highly recommended

First, I really appreciated being able to review this book months prior to it's release! I loved Paul and Maggie's relationship. I thought this was well written and captures their relationship in its entirety. This was one of the better romances I've read in a while. I've been recommending this book quite a bit and I plan on continuing to help The Madness of March succeed!

Paul Tanner and Nicky Newman were two of the most highly recruited Point Guards in the country for Division II Basketball. New Coach at the ‘U’ Bob Barrows built his whole program around them. Everything was going fine and the team was on track to become one of the greatest ever in the region until Paul let fame and the attention

go right to his head. He partied hardy, drank, did drugs and had many women but mostly didn’t remember what happened once he started down that dark path.

He and Nicky became brothers that first year and even lectures and pleas from Nicky didn’t help straighten him out. Paul knew Nicky was hurting too—watching him destroy his life like that. Nicky lost his only brother the same way and feared the same would happen to Paul. Nicky felt he just couldn’t bury another brother.

Until….Paul met Maggie Sardo. He didn’t want to fall in love with her and knew she would hate his friends and bad habits but he just couldn’t help himself. He knew the only way he could be with her was if he changed his life around and was Nicky ever so happy he had someone to help him save Paul.

Somehow your past always finds you as in this story. Paul tried to live a good life but it always seemed to haunt him—even years later. This story is about tragedy, hope, kindness, friendships and most of all love. First book by this author and overall enjoyable which left me thinking even after turning the last page.

This is a review for Net Galley.

Maggie is a 22 year old that works at a shop and attends basketball games on a regular basis with a couple of her friends. There she finds herself meeting one of the stars of the basketball team after a game named Paul. Paul is 20 years old, still attending college. After the two talk for only a few minutes Paul invites her to a party after one of his games the following weekend. However, she did not know that it was a drug party and Paul was on the downside of his life with drugs. Things get off to a rough start between Maggie and Paul. Can Paul get his life together so that he might find himself with someone he loves?

This was a cute romance story. The reason why I rated it a two is because there were a lot of mistakes. One of them that was frustrating was a lot was spelled allot about every single time. I wished I would have written down all the mistakes I found. I don't know if it is because I read it on my kindle. At first by the writing style and mistakes I kept wondering through the story if this was the authors first book. It didn't sound like it at the end when there was a list of other books written by her. However, I did enjoy the story enough to finish that I am curious to maybe try some of her other books.

The other reason why I rated it a 2 is because towards the end we here Maggie and Pauls story being told by Paul again. I completely understand why it was being told but instead of telling it for pages at a time I think it could have been shortened. I ended up flipping through it quickly to get to a stopping point where they were done telling the story.

I liked the direction of the story telling how Paul was on drugs and where his life went from there with the help of a couple of close people in his life. The message given of how drugs from the past can still catch up with a person even when they think they have moved on. So I still recommend this book. I had a really hard time trying to rate this story as I did like it but there were a lot of errors.