This book was just sadly not for me! I was hoping for something different but it turned out to be something I was not expecting, which is okay and I'm sure someone else would love it!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to the advanced copy of this book to read.

I enjoyed this female/female romance. I enjoyed hearing Annie's story and getting to glimpse at Grant and Darren's relationship as well. Being this is Annie's first female romance and being an introvert, I liked how the writer handled her anxieties and address them. I thought the relationship between Eve and Annie was great and both were likable characters.

Hard Drive is sugar-coated sweetness with a huge drop of jealous stalker.

Shae Connor gives us a loner who focuses on school and work while ogling her crush in her spare time. Imagine when said crush comes to your dorm room with a computer emergency that your brother says only you can fix for her. Yeah…no problem. Gratitude abounds and Annie is beyond happy.

I am an introvert myself so I totally related to Annie. I do think it is funny that she attends most of Eve’s games, but has no clue what the actual game is about. (smh) Connor gives us many funny moments between these two potential love-birds.

I wasn’t surprised by who the villain ended up being, I was just surprised it took everyone else so long to figure it out. I wish there hadn’t been a villain to be honest. I think dealing with sports and anxiety would have been enough for the story. Adding in an enemy and exposure just seemed to add more drama to the story.

I like Annie and Eve. I think their romance is really sweet. I was rooting for them. Connor definitely knocked this romance right out of the park.

A steamy, gorgeous queer romance with some fantastic characters. I loved the school setting and it was so nice to see a ‘cheesy’ LGBT romance that was just portrayed as normal and average.

This one was not for me. I found it hard to get in the head of the protagonist and understand her motivations. I'm not sure if I was at a detriment having not read the previous related novel but I didnt enjoy the writing style as it felt quite rudimentary. I DNF'd this book.

I thought that this was a cute, quick read. There were some more serious topics that were touched on, but didn't really go into detail. I think it could have been a better story if things had been more flushed out and taken deeper. It was also a bit predictable, but that isn't a bad thing. If you are looking for a fun, quick read this is the story for you.
Thank you #NetGalley and publisher for this ARC.

Trigger Warnings: Panic attacks, accidental outing, alcohol consumption, grief, mental illness (anxiety), explicit sex, bullying, fatphobia, past mentions of - abandonment, addiction, alcoholism, child abused and drug use.

Hard Drive by Shae Connor is a sight to behold. To give a short description - Annie is an electronics everything genius who you can find the most in her dorm room fixing broken stuff for her fellow college peers. She is coming to terms with her being bisexual and is trying her best to contain her crush on college's ace softball player Eve Frederick, who's rumored to enjoy only casual hookups.

Okay first thing I liked about it? It wasn't slow burn. As much as I enjoy slow burn, the thrill about finding out my cutesy characters being upright about their crush on each other while being iffy about it so satisfying oh my. The setting itself was really amazing! The fact that it fits the trope of "The nerd and the jock (aka softball player)" was refreshing on so many levels. The main characters seemed really realistic and it was also good to see how anxiety was represented in the book. As for the plot, it was equally engaging. Annie was an amazing narrator and seeing the story from her perspective evoked a sense of empathy in me because she was very empathetic in general.

I really liked the character development as well as how the book dealt with important topics. One such was enjoying porn, and engaging in sexual practices by oneself which isn't much talked about in general. Oh did I mention the book has good smut scenes? No? Well, I assure you they are really amazing! I loved how consent, interaction and communication was maturely and naturally present in the story. Eve and Annie were really amazing to see - whether it was them being in a romantic and sexual relationship, or them navigating through their personal stuff on their own and coming to terms with their identity. I reallllyyy recommend this book! And omg I am soo excited to read the first book in this series (they are unrelated in general however characters from book 1 are present here)!

This was an enjoyable read.
I like stories like these because they provide LGBTQI representation that's breezy and blends in with all the other books in its category.

Annie is a college girl who recently discovered she's bisexual. Her anxiety usually keeps her locked up in her dorm room with her computer, but when the sexy, cool Eve from the softball team (who also happens to be her biggest crush) asks her out, she finds that she is enjoying leaving her comfort zone. However, there may be someone trying to tear them apart. Will they be able to get through it together?

Annie Clark is an introvert with anxiety, who’d much rather hide in her dorm room fixing other people’s technology than be out in the world. She’s recently realized she’s bisexual and is crushing hard on softball pitcher, Eve Fredrick. Annie never expects the beautiful and athletic Eve to even look her way. But when her brother sends Eve to her dorm in a fit of panic, Annie is quick to fix Eve’s laptop problem. And she gets tongue tied when Eve invites her out for dinner as a thank you.

The two women hit it off and casual dating ensues. Annie is shy and awkward, and she’s never done this before. But Eve is a dynamic person and Annie gets sucked right in. Over several weeks, they get to know each other and spend as much time together as their schedules allow. But not long after things get physical, Eve seems to disappear. Annie is left with a broken heart and certainly doesn’t want to hear Eve’s apologies. Especially not when Eve goes to extreme measures to try and get Annie to listen.

But eventually, they are able to have a conversation and start over again as friends. As they really get to know each other, true feelings develop. Except someone is plotting to out them further, and it’s up to the two women to figure out who and why.

This is the second book in Shae Connor’s University of Atlanta series, but it can be read as a standalone. Annie is Grant’s sister, and Grant and Darryn get their love story in Rough and Tumble. Though some of the events of that book are brought up here, it’s not necessary to have read it to enjoy this story. I like Connor’s characters and this book is no exception, but I did have a few issues with the pacing.

Annie is the narrator of this tale, and it’s told in first person present. This is really her journey in a lot of ways. I like how the author handled Annie’s anxiety, and it wasn’t something that needed to be “fixed” in order for Annie to have happiness. She is who she is, and she doesn’t need to change. Eve, on the other hand, is living the life she thinks she should, instead of being true to herself. Eventually, and with Annie’s help, she’s able to become who she’s meant to be.

The MCs have chemistry from their first meeting, and it gets even better as Eve embraces her true self toward the end. It has the right amount of heat balanced with storyline, and it’s easy to root for these two women to find their HEA. Although I will say this book ends with more of an HFN, as they’re both young and just beginning their adult lives. Both the MCs are about 20, and it shows in their actions and thoughts, but they aren’t immature, even if they don’t always make the best decisions.

But as I mentioned, the pacing is a bit off for me. It begins with a bit of a slow burn, which is not the problem, and I liked them getting to know each other before really diving in. But there are a lot of time jumps here that didn’t work as well for me. Many of the scenes and chapters begin with a recitation of what day it is and a few sentences of what Annie was doing in the meantime without really showing much. This goes on for about two-thirds of the book, and then things really begin to pick up. For me, it was a bit too late, and I felt like the last quarter to third of the book seemed rushed. Eve is finally letting her true self out, and the MCs are barreling toward love declarations. It didn’t work as well for me, because I would have liked to see them together and exploring their relationship with Eve not hiding behind a mask.

There’s also the whole storyline toward the end with sort-of blackmail, and to me it felt shoehorned in. It was clear to me who was behind it, which wasn’t the problem, but the reasoning for it as well, as the resolution, was a bit lackluster. I would have liked to see it be a bigger part of the story, or absent all together. As it was written, it didn’t work well for me.

But all in all, this was a decent story. I really did like the characters, and that carried the book for me. If you’re a fan of this author, or NA books with athletes and college, I would say give this book a try.

*I was sent this ARC in exchange for an honest review

2.5*

I want to start off by saying I appreciate the author for writing this book. This is a concept I have wanted to read for so long. Like seriously. I've been screaming about how I wanted a sapphic softball romance for years now, so when this one popped up in my inbox I knew I had to have it. With that being said, I think I might have built this book up in my head because I've wanted it for so long. So I think the book had potential and maybe my expectations were just too high, but this just fell flat in too many ways for me.

I felt like the story didn't deliver the premise I was sold. Yes one of our heroines is a softball player and we get a couple of scenes with the field/games, but I was hoping for more. That is probably just the former softball player in me, so I let that slide, but the characters just felt forced together. Their coming together didn't feel natural. It just felt like the author was looking for a reason to force these two girls together and this was her best solution. Also, I didn't get why these two should be together. I didn't feel their chemistry. The steamy scenes were just lacking in details and length.

I loved the concept behind the book and I'm so glad we are getting more sapphic romances, but as a wlw, this one just didn't work for me.

If you’re looking for a college romance you should check this one out. I like Annie and Evas story overall but things god a little weird and fell apart a little when the author added a bad guy to the story. Eva’s roommate sabotaging their relationship and ever threatening to release a tape of them having sex lost me.
Solid story that went a little awry

When I think of romance, I think of books just like this one, that gives all the feels and satisfies every romance junkies' heart. This is a perfect books to snuggle up with on any day. This one took by surprise!

this one: it’s a sweet romance between an anxious computer nerd and a confident softball player with plenty of communication between the two women (like, Actual Healthy Communication! about problems and issues!), side characters I loved & a character arc that didn’t revolve solely around the romance. (If you’re relatively new around here then people being people outside of relationships is a thing I adore!!)

The pacing did feel a tad slow in places but it didn’t pull me out of the story, (and honestly part of that might have been the fact that I know absolutely nothing about computers and even less about softball) and overall this was a super sweet, tender story with characters I enjoyed reading about and rooted for!

thankyou to @pridebooktours & @entangled_publishing for providing an e-arc! it was very gratefully received but my review/thoughts were not influenced by this at all.

This was a really read! It felt a little like reading a fan fiction (a good thing in my opinion) and had some really sweet (and spicy) moments. There were parts that I'd have loved to explore with a little more depth, but as a light queer romance it was very enjoyable!

Very rarely do I sit down and am able to devour books in a single sitting. But I did with this one. Connor gives us such an amazing portrait of not only a sapphic romance, but that which portrays anxiety in real life situations - making it applicable to the reader with every sentence.

We meet Annie, a twin to brother Grant, who suffers from crippling anxiety but is also discovering her sexuality, and if you’ve ever been in her shoes, the anxiety is tenfold with that alone. She is succumbed quickly to the looks of star softball pitcher for their college, Eve.

Enter Eve, an easy on the eyes, star athlete who is known to “hit it and quit it” with the ladies and also rocks that super hot pink hair that just reeks of self-assurance and charisma.

As luck would have it, Grant somehow manages to make their paths cross, and this is where Annie gets the girl of her dreams. Or does she?

When I tell you this book had a nice little twist that maybe was foreshadowed but you never knew why, it totally rocked my world. Mixed with real life emotions, this collegiate stand alone will have you not only sweating and heart palpitating from the delectable sex scenes, but also the friendships and bonds made throughout.

If you’re looking for a little steam, say no more fam, I got you. If you’re looking for a sapphic book to rock your world, this is it. If you’re looking to be wooed by an unputdownable book, I’ve got you covered.

I’m stepping into uncharted territory with the romance and so far I haven’t been let down. This book is just what I needed to continue my deep dive into all things romance. I’d suggest picking it up

Cute story, plenty of chemistry and romance between the main characters. Short, sweet, fun book with a lot to like. Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

The premise of this book held so much promise as I love queer sports romances, especially in a college setting. I can tolerate a pretty high level of "instalove" but this strained the boundaries for me. I didn't understand how they got together really and it went way too fast. I thought the plot twist was a bit unbelievable, too easily resolved, and too late in the book. Overall, it was fine. I think it could have benefitted from more development on the front end to make Annie and Eve's relationship more believable and for the reader to be more invested.

The 411: Self proclaimed nerdy and shy Annie has recently come out to some as bisexual. As a student at University of Atlanta, she keeps mostly to herself, going to class, working her technology repair business and hanging out with a few close friends. Life is good until school softball star and also Annie's biggest crush comes and flips Annie's world upside down.
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The honest truth: I love, love, love a book that takes place in any sort of school setting. This was a quick read with a lot of 🔥🔥! I loved the popular softball player and nerdy girl romance.

Hard Drive by Shae Connor⁠
4⭐⁠
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I'd like to start this book with a huge thank you for the option to see content warnings for this boom via a website - I feel like content warnings are so important but also people don't always want to view it as it can sometimes spoil the story a little, so to have the choice is something I loved and something I'd love to see in more books.⁠
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I think this is the first book that has bisexual characters and I LOVED IT - like, I literally read it in 4 and a half hours, I couldn't put it down. I got completely lost in the world of Annie and Eve, and their heartwarming, emotional journey to finding themselves and coming to terms with who they are and their sexuality.⁠
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Written beautifully from the POV of Annie, it was so easy to jump into her mind and really root for her. We were even taken on her steamy, intimate adventures which is always a pleasure - no pun intended.⁠
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With themes of loss, grief, toxic friendships and balancing different elements of life, this was a real heartwarming read, and who doesn't love a happy ending?!⁠
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I can't wait to read more of this author's work and of this series, I do just have one question for Shae..⁠
Did she get the cheesecake?!