I love reading books with alternating character POV so The Game Can't Love You Back was a home run for me. Everyone will be rooting for Eve and Jamie from the 1st pitch. Karole Cozzo definitely hit this one out of the park. What an adorable baseball read just in time for baseball season.

Super cute YA romance! Eve and Jamie are well-written characters, each struggling with their own issues. My one gripe was that the ending was rather abrupt.

I really liked the character development in this book! And the build up to the romance was sweet and believable and I liked the pace it was at. My only complaint is that one of the main characters, Eve, always downplayed things that were girly, which got really annoying. It happened a couple of times throughout the book, so it kind of got under my skin. Overall, though, THE GAME CAN'T LOVE YOU BACK is a well written hate-to-love contemporary!

I have read books by Karole Cozzo before and have enjoyed them. She is definitely an author on my to be read list. This book did not disappoint. There was plenty of chemistry between Jaime and Eve. The sparks really flew between them. The premise of a girl playing baseball on a guy’s team was a really empowering message that I would encourage any teen girl to read. I liked that both Eve and Jaime both had their own set of issues to overcome. It makes them more relatable as characters.

Eve is a great female protagonist and this is a cute read. When two schools are forced together due to an issue with the structure of the school building, Eve finds herself forced to join the baseball team of her rivals and to compete against a boy that gets on all of her nerves,Jamie. This story has the common theme boy and girl who shouldn't like each other but are drawn together. It was a cute read, light and yet focused on the strong female lead. I enjoyed it and it read quickly. I also liked the banter between Eve and Jamie and the development of their relationship. Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion. .

A little whitebread in a couple ways, but a thoroughly enjoyable high school version of Pitch. Recommend for your rom-com lovers.

My thoughts:
This is the classic hate to love to hate to love story. Teen girls will eat it up. What makes it different and refreshing is that Eve is a tomboy, star athlete on the boys baseball team and she does not have to change who she is to get the boy. We finally get a character, Eve, who is a good daughter, a good sister and a good best friend. She is not angsty or awkward. She is smart, competitive, driven and innocent.

Cozzo follows the romance formula, but I like the way these females are written.

Smart, funny, and sexy! I devoured this glorious book!

Eve is one of those characters that you can immediately connect to. Headstrong, passionate, and protective over what matters most in her life - in this case taking pride in being the only girl on the school's baseball team. When she finds herself on the same team as Jamie - a guy she has absolutely no use for - you start to see the other side of that coin where she is stubborn and challenging to a fault. And that is what makes her and Jamie's give and take so satisfying! Their interaction is deeply rooted in raw emotion. It starts out as one beast and beautifully transitions into another. Their chemistry flew off the page and smacked me right in the face. I melted over every single word like hot butta on a biscuit!

Just based on Eve's narrative you are suppose to hate Jamie's face right along with her, but immediately you see that he's not who Eve thinks he is and the journey to get Eve there is so delicious and fun! Dual POV's, woot!

After finishing my ARC I immediately went and preordered on Amazon. I have to own a physical copy. Have to and need to! That is how good it is! Gah, I loved it!

A delightful baseball read! Loved the chemistry between Jamie and eve. Loved the premise of the story being a merger of two rival teams. I liked how both were super competitive and the authors use of that to build the chemistry. The language was a bit strong for my liking. Overall , a good YA read about learning to trust someone other than yourself.

I received this eARC novel from NetGalley. This is my honest review.
This book will be published May 2018.

Being the only girl on the baseball team, Eve is looking forward to her senior year to win the Cy Trophy. But when her school has an unexpected catastrophe happen, her entire school is forced to join the other high school in her town. Which means that the entire class has to join together, and all of the sports now have to be changed from 2 teams to 1, losing half of the team.

Eve wanted the school to host both teams as separate teams and keep her Bulldog status, but she was disappointed when the schoolboard told her that they will only have one team and it will be the Pirates.

But Eve loses the game of baseball, so she is willing to play as a Pirate to enjoy her last year in baseball. Because she knows that she is not going to be able to play after high school. She may be getting a lot of publicity for being amazing at baseball, but no one is going to sign her on professionally and she is also starting to get a woman's body, which is hard to play the game with the boys.

Jamie is the pitcher for the Pirates, so he's not excited at all that Eve is coming over as a rival in his place, because he is going to win that Cy Trophy again for the second year in a row. He has to in order to get a scholarship to be able to go to college.

At first, Jamie and Eve hate each other. They don't talk to each other, they aren't civil with each other, and they wish the other would stop playing.

But then things change. They start to get to know each other. They start to see the person behind the rival, the enemy, of their trophy. And they see how their home lives are and what they are wanting in life. Soon, they start to like one another, but things are not that easy. Feelings are jumping around and indecision is high in the air.

Soon, a decision has to be made between baseball and life, and Eve and Jamie are right in the middle of it all.

This was a cute novel. I really loved how dedicated Eve was - especially with the "hazing" part that the original Pirates did. She didn't let anything faze her and she was determined to keep her place because was dedicated and passionate about it. She took so much crap for being on the baseball team when they have a softball team, but her mother was hardcore and told Eve that she was only allowed to do baseball, because she wasn't going to go to 4 different sports in the springtime with all of her siblings.

Jamie was an okay character. He was popular and acted like an ass most of the time, but he was actually struggling at home. I think he should major in drama and acting, because he sure knew how to fool his friends into thinking he was a completely different person.

The way that Eve and Jamie were together was a bummer for me. I wish they were brave enough to tell everyone around them that they liked one another instead of keeping it a secret. Because then things blew up in their face and they had to face the consequences of their actions.

I really enjoy YA sport theme books, and this was another one that I really enjoyed! I think fans of sport romances and fans of this author will really like this novel when it's published.

So, I'm really glad I stuck this one out. In the beginning I was just not gelling with these characters and was ready to mark it DNF but I refused to DNF my first book of 2018 and I'm jazzed that I kept on. You get to genuinely see these characters grow. If you want to read about a badass heroine who breaks stereotypes and exceeds expectations - check this one out.

Though, one thing I cannot let go - Eve, girl, how do you shower and not take your french braids out?

I received this arc from Netgalley for an honest review. I'm a sucker for contemporary ya/teen fiction that is sports related, so when I saw this title come up I couldn't wait to give it a try. I genuinely loved Eve and immediately cared about how the season went for her. I liked her story with Jamie and felt that it was complex enough for a teen novel. Some parts were predictable and others left me hanging, wondering how things went after the book ended, like with Eve's best friend. I read this book in two sittings and hope to read more by the author.