Review: Heavy Hitter

Raise your hand if you’ve had high expectations for a book that are absolutely, totally, not even a little bit met. Yep. It’s the worst. I really wanted to like Heavy Hitter, the latest novel from bestselling author Katie Cotugno. And. Well. I didn’t like it. At all. I’m actually surprised that I finished it. 

Here’s the book’s description:

Taylor and Travis. Jennifer and A-Rod. Marilyn and Joe. When a professional athlete and a megawatt star fall in love, the world is obsessed . . .

With four chart-topping albums, Lacey Logan is a superstar whose life no longer feels like her own. Her every move is photographed, videoed, and dissected online, and her carefully curated Instagram feed studied by fans worldwide. To maintain her privacy, Lacey skillfully controls her narrative, showing fans and paparazzi what she wants them to see.

But when Lacey discovers her boyfriend is hiding two devastating secrets—a bad cocaine habit and a pregnant girlfriend—she begins to lose confidence and control of her own story. Then big-shouldered baseball player Jimmy Hodges, a former Rookie of the Year when Lacey was in high school, walks into the bar where she’s venting to a friend. With his shaggy beard and unfashionable button-down, Jimmy is the opposite of the picture-perfect guy Lacey thinks she wants. Soon, sparks fly and inhibitions go out the window when Lacey dares to take some chances.

Lacey and Jimmy are polar opposites. But could this be the forever after they both need?

I gave this book a generous two stars with one star basically just being for all the baseball references and half of that star due to the Bull Durham reference. Cotugno either knows baseball well or did her research and I could feel what Jimmy was going through (even though I’m a fan, not a player myself). 

Things I liked: 

• Baseball.

• Happily For Now. Things end well but not so neatly as some romances give which is refreshing sometimes.

• The length. It’s a short book (240 pages) so it was over quickly.

• Dual narrative. Nice to get the perspective of both main characters. 

Things I didn’t like:

• How obvious it was that it was Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce fan fiction - if Kelce played professional baseball instead of football. I love Swift and how she manages herself (is she perfect? No, no one is but that’s not a discussion for today.) but this was just… too much. 

• The length. I know, it’s on both lists. It was too short and there were SO many little storylines that were left completely dangling. 

• The end. I don’t like how open ended it was. 

• The characters. I just didn’t care about them.

• Insta love. I don’t often have a problem with it but I did with this one.

• The POV/tense. It was third person and present? I think? I don’t know for sure (this is why I’m not a novelist) but whatever it was, it didn’t work.

OK, well, that’s enough. No need to beat a dead horse (or dead relationship - I cannot see these two making it much longer). Heavy Hitter was just straight up not an enjoyable book. And it absolutely should have been. I’ll still read more of Katie Cotugno’s books in hopes they’re much better.

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, Harper Perennial, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*