Review: Moonshot by Alessandra Torre

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You know how it goes: you get in a bit of a reading rut and nothing really feels right. All the books you read are itchy, and then you can't even bring yourself to pick anything up. So you browse your TBR looking for something you shelved ages ago but never got around to, and now you're hoping there's a treasure in the pile.

 A few years ago I was deep into my discovery of dark romance and read a few Alessandra Torre novels, which I thoroughly enjoyed, when I shelved her then-latest, Moonshot, a baseball romance that wasn't right for me at the time. Fast forward a couple of years, I see that cover, remember wanting to read it, and check it out from my library's eBook catalog. Friends, it was exactly what I needed, an intense romance with that elusive something more, an unputdownable read that I devoured in about a day. Come with me through the jump and I'll tell you all about it. Except for the spoilery good stuff, of course. You need to read that yourself!



The world is a dumpster fire, so dark and awful are not on the literary menu these days. I'm looking for lightness, for a bit of fun, for a guaranteed happy ending, and I judged Moonshot by its cover, assuming that it was going to be the right thing for a picky palette. And it was! But to get to that HEA, it wasn't all lightness and fluff, it was that grab-you-by-the-heart-and-drag-you-along-through-a-twisty-roller-coaster kind of story. We get our HEA, but it's a bruising journey with heartbreak and disaster along the way. And I dig that.

 The structure of this book kept me turning pages, needing to know what was going to happen, leaving me in awe of Alessandra Torre's skill. I loved that it was dual POVs because I always relish seeing how both people in a couple think about the other; that's where the truth always lies. I also loved the way she built the story, feeling like she was leading us in one direction, then getting to the end of the path and the destination being nothing like I'd thought it would be. She did that not once, but twice! Amazing. 

 I feel like most of the romances I've read feature a heroine who has a lot of growing to do and a hero who is practically perfect already. That is not that case in Moonshot, and I find that I really like when the hero has some changing, some growing to do. In this book, both MCs end up completely different people than who they started out as, and I love that. Chase ends up a little softer and a lot more respectable, Ty ends up a little harder and a bit less respectable, and in the end they are both better for it, better matched for one another. 

 I don't real a whole lot of sports romances, not because I'm avoiding them, they just don't float to the top of my list very often. If Moonshot is indicative of its subgenre, I need to seek out some more. The backdrop of an intense championship run heightened all of the other emotions in the book. Add to that the murder mystery that seemed to hinge on the team, and it was so much delicious drama. 

 If you enjoy sports, especially baseball, if you're a fan of unbearably sexy people, if you like intensity and drama with your guaranteed happy-ever-after, then Moonshot might be the book for you. 

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