Book Review: Blind Side

I finished book 2 in the Red Zone Rivals series by Kandi Steiner yesterday, Blind Side, and I loved it more than the first book, Fair Catch, which I did really like!

Blind Side follows North Boston University’s star safety, Clay Johnson, and student PR manager for the football team, Giana Jones. We met them both in Fair Catch, but Clay was in it a bit more since he’s a football player and friends with Zeke and Riley.

In Fair Catch, it’s mentioned that Clay is madly in love with his high school sweetheart. When Blind Side begins, Clay is in a terrible mood and is rude to the press much to Giana’s dismay since her job is to connect the players with the media. Normally, Clay is nice, charming, and easy to work with. Then she finds out he’s in a mood because his high school sweetheart, Maliyah, has broken up with him. They spend last year long distance and now she has transferred to Boston only to break up with him when she arrived.

Giana is hard working, a romance book lover, and has a big crush on a local musician and fellow NBU student, Shawn. When Clay and Giana meet at a cafe to make a plan to make up for his bad behavior to the press recently, he notices that she has a crush on Shawn and a plan dawns on him. They can fake date, which will bring attention to Giana and she’ll catch the eye of Shawn and their fake relationship will also make Maliyah jealous and want to get back together with Clay.

Giana is more introverted and inexperienced with guys so in addition to the fake dating, she asks Clay to help her become more experienced with guys so that she isn’t embarrassed or look like she doesn’t know what she’s doing when her and Shawn finally get together. The more time the two spend together the less it feels like fake dating and the more it feels like real feelings. Clay makes Giana feel safe and doesn’t let her feel self-conscious ever. Giana sees Clay and encourages him to put himself first instead of last all the time.

I loved the book! I always love a good fake dating, spicy book and add in the sports romance trope and it’s so good. There were elements of this book that reminded me of The Deal and The Dare by Elle Kennedy. It reminded me of The Deal because of some similarities with feeling safe with each other and Hannah also started hanging out with Garrett to get another guy’s attention with the deal they made. In The Dare there was fake dating and Conor had issues from his past that he didn’t want to drag Taylor into and in Blind Side Clay has family issues that he also doesn’t want to burden anyone with. They’re not super similar, but it just reminded me of those books.

I loved the book and I loved both Clay and Giana. I love how Clay didn’t make Giana feel weird or insecure with her inexperience or her questions/requests of him and he was there for her throughout (except for that inevitable third act breakup). Giana was also really mature throughout the troubles they went through and I sort of wish that there was a scene at like a party or something where maybe she flirts with someone else and makes Clay insanely jealous, but maybe that’s just me being petty haha.

Anyway, again I loved the book and I can’t wait to read the last two. I’m going to take a little break from the series/sports romances first since I’ve been reading so many of them in a row, but I plan to finish it off in May!

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