Review of “Sparkling Fear” by

• nice love story
• likable cast
• some sex scenen (not too many, not too spicey)
• weird very forced ending

This is not only the first book I read in some time but also the first romance book. Funny enough the only two romance books I think I ever read are hockey-romances which I got recommended xD So it might be a genre I personally am a bit uneducated in, keep that in mind when reading, maybe there are some more things a more educated reader of the genre would look out for which I don’t. But maybe, I’ll become more versed in it in the future 😉
Also, like in the last hockey-romance I have read, this book is part of a series! Which I knew but kinda ignored because from my VAST experience these kinds of books can be read on their own without much knowledge about what came before. Because they usually focus on a couple and their stories, which might not have even appeared or have not been focussed on much in prior books. I can’t say how much these two main character have come up in book one which was called sparkling hope, but I can say that aside from getting to know the main cast of friends better, it did not feel like I was missing anything. But again, without book one to draw information from, my review might be a bit different, focussing only on what happens in sparkling fear.

This story is about a football captain that never knew love, than found it and ran away from it as well as a ballerina who fell way too hard way too quickly and got her heartbroken. Just for the two of them to meet again at the most inconvenient of times, after the football captain’s best friend tragically died. While the captain, Charles, starts to have to deal with depression, panic attacks and alcohol abuse the ballerina called Leni, finally got away from her abusive mother, wanting to start a new life at a new university far away from where she came. It’s all about healing together, rekindling and defining what’s between them and finding out who they can be together.
It’s all in all a bittersweet love story, that feels real to some extent, like something that could have really happened to a friend, but then again fictional men are just so much nicer and more apologetic than the reals ones. I was kinda taken out of the immersion by some of the nicer stuff and realizations that are happening to the male character (with the help of therapy I might add, so it’s somewhat realistic) but he also has his fair share of dumb decisions that he has to make up for again. So it’s a back and forth, almost a slow burn romance between them, which I did really enjoy. There are some spicy scenes in this book, for people who want to know about it. But they are rather short, rather few in general and to me personally not what one would call smut. They are on the saver side for readers with a faint heart 😉

The ending disappointed me a bit because it really felt like the story was already finished and a happy ending could have been told, but then something needed to happen, so the book could go on for another few chapters. And it’s written in a way that is really predictable. Like there is an obstacle, coming out of nowhere, and you know it will be solved, it’s defently made up, nothing prior indicated it could be anything but. And as a reader you just skip through the chapters to get to where the problems get’s resolved, because you know it will. To me, it really was not necessary, it felt like for some reason the author needed the problems the two already worked their way through, to come up one last time and for that to happen, she needed to come up with something to bring them forth. But they really didn’t or if they really needed, she should have come up with something more convincing, so that the reader would really have to worry till the last second if it’s resolvable or not. That really taints the story in a way it would not have needed to be.
Another small point of critique I’d have is that the ratio of whose story got to be in the spotlight, in this book it is mainly on Charles. Leni has an abusive mother who calls her now and then, and she talks about it a few times, the mother even shows up once, but that’s about it. She does talk about her dad too, but not in the way Charles does. His dad comes up multiple times, we get to meet him and Charles sister fairly often, aswell as his friends, Coach, even his favorite bartender. The death of his friend, which is obviously the main theme of the book, of course plays a big part. And Leni really helps him to deal with all of that, he helps her to eat like two times and her problems just kinda vanish eventually, she does not even really has to do that much, it just never comes up again from certain point. And that feels a bit sad… could have maybe been a bit more like 50/50 or at least 50/40 or something, felt more like 80/20 in this case, which is something that just bothers me personally.

Final verdict

All in all I’d still recommend the book to people who like tropes like couples helping each other to heal, work through things, soothe panic attacks etc. And I really love that men going to therapy is nicely portrait in here, more stories should include stuff like that and as I said, it makes the nice things and the coming around of Charles way more believe than if he’d just come up with that and changed himself on his own. The story itself, which focuses much more on the male lead and his problems than the female lead, is very nice to read through and put a smile on my face often. Just the end kinda destroyed how good the book could have been for me personally. It even makes the epilogue, which is something I wish all romance books would give us, a bit meh. So I’d give the book 3 out of 5 Stars. It’s a good read, but could have been better with small changes.