REVIEW - Rookie Moves - Shelly Alexander

TITLE - Rookie Moves

AUTHOR - Shelly Alexander

Blurb:

"'Rookie? She'll be an expert when I'm done teaching her." --Dex Moore

Smart guys make the best lovers. We’re curious and want to learn as much as possible, especially when it comes to women. Women are the most fascinating and complicated species on the planet, right? So when we meet a lady who piques our interest, it drives our curiosity to soaring heights. We want to study her. Figure her out.

Lucky SOB that I am, I’ve built a career on this very thing. As a founding partner of Checkmate Inc., a company that’s grown into a multimillion-dollar business, I’m a quasi-celebrity. It’s a role I never expected, and out of all three Checkmate partners I’ve somehow been labeled the jet-setting playboy.

I don’t mind the smokescreen. I can’t commit to a serious relationship while I trot around the globe to oversee our expansion, a venture that could bankrupt Checkmate if I don’t keep my eye on the prize. Besides, the only woman I’d like to study, figure out, and unlock her ear-splitting cry of ecstasy is the one woman I can’t have. And since she’s one of my closest friends and my business partner’s sister, a jet-setting playboy image is the perfect facade to hide my true feelings.

Review:

Rookie Moves is book 2 in the Checkmate, Inc. series. This book can be read as a standalone as I didn’t even realize it was part of a series until I started reading the book and realized that there was probably another book about one of the other characters who is mentioned a lot.  This book was written pretty well in my opinion, but still has some minor issues that could be worked on for future books. This book contains an alpha male, a feisty female, and explosive reactions to one another.

The plot of this book was interesting. If I had to generalize it I would say it is a rich playboy meets best friend’s sister. I actually really enjoyed the plot of this book. It wasn’t just some poorly put together plot. The author really took her time in building the story around the plot so that the reader could really be invested and feel the story was realistic.

The characters in this book are developed quite well. The main male character, Dex, has a lot of growing to do. He faces a lot of internal battles that he must face before he can really move on as a character. The main female character, Ava, we only see from Dex’s point of view, but we can tell a lot about her from his observations. I feel this book is a lot about her transforming as well as Dex. The minor characters were written well as well. As I said before, one of the minor characters already have their own book. At least one, if not two, of the other minor characters I feel will also get their own books. The author wrote these characters in such a way that I want to go back and read the first book and I am now looking forward to reading about the other two as well.

There is a lot of chemistry between these two characters. What I love most is that because of Dex’s connection to Ava’s brother, Leo, they actually have a connection before the story begins. I feel this added a whole depth to this story that took the book to a whole other level. I also feel this contributed to the scorching scenes between these two characters. I know it was the cause of a lot of the turmoil that Dex felt.

The writing style in this book is single point of view. We read the book solely from Dex’s point of view. I have not read a single point of view in a while, but it wasn’t bad. I do wish I was able to see things from Ava’s point of view, but with the single point of view I really felt like I was trying to figure things out right alongside Dex. It made it a little bit easier for me to put myself in his shoes because I was missing important details just like he was.
I only have two complaints about this book. One, I felt the resolution was not very realistic. It wasn’t that the resolution was bad, I just had a really hard time believing that it would be resolved that way. Second, I wish the epilogue had more about Oz, the minor character I believe the next book will center around. While I do want to read his book, I didn’t feel there was enough breadcrumbs to really make reader die to read the next book.

In conclusion, this was a really good book. I would recommend this to my friends. This book had a really good storyline with characters that are likeable. I plan to go back and read book one and then await the next book in the series to release. Wonderful job.