Something So Right

By Natasha Madison

Synopsis

The moment everything changed didn’t happen in that cliché rockets-red-glare kind of way, it happened in the form of a waking nightmare. I caught my husband, my high-school sweetheart, the father of my children, balls deep in a sordid affair.

That was when I gave up on men and love.

I didn’t count on the NHL’s golden boy, the beautiful, arrogant Cooper Stone turning my life and my hockey rink upside down.

My kids are why I wake up in the morning.
Hockey is what Cooper breathes for.

We’re from different worlds and places in our lives but when our hearts collided something so wrong and different turned into something so right.

Review

SOMETHING SO RIGHT is the debut novel from Natasha Madison, and one I enjoyed. It’s the story of Parker, a single mum to two kids who caught her husband having an affair two years earlier, and Cooper, an NHL superstar who’s rehabbing at her facility during the off-season. Like Parker, when they first met I wanted to beat Cooper’s arse for how rude and arrogant he was to her, and I loved how she let him keep the upper hand for a few hours before knocking him down with a polite yet effective punch. Parker is funny and easy-going, but she’s also not afraid to stand up for herself when she has to. Cooper starts out unlikeable, but he quickly turns his attitude around and becomes swoon-worthy book-boyfriend material.

So, why only three hearts? Because while I enjoyed the story, there were some things I didn’t like about it.
1 – The amount of sex in this book. I know there are a lot of people out there that love snatching up a book when they hear a reader complaining about too much sex, so for those people I say “buy away” because you won’t be disappointed. There are about a dozen sex scenes in all, and I started skipping them early on just to get back to the good part…the story.
2 – The dirty talk, especially when it came from Parker. I still can’t make up my mind on whether I found it laughable or cringe-worthy.
3 – The number of times the word “vagina” came up in conversation or inner-monologue. It was used six times in the first chapter alone, and used a total of nineteen times. Maybe that makes me sound like a prude, but I can honestly say that I have never read a book where that word is used that many times.

So what did I like about it? Well that’s easy: the characters.
1 – I loved that Parker’s children acted their age. Matthew was protective of his mother but he could also act like the surly teen you expect a boy his age to behave. Allison was an adorable little girl whose innocence shined through the pages.
2 – I loved how Cooper interacted with the kids. He always answered their questions with honesty and he always treated them with love and respect. He never made them feel as though he was encroaching on their family, but instead that he was adding to it.
3 – I loved how Parker stood up for herself with Cooper’s crazy ex-girlfriend and that she didn’t let her lack of self-confidence weigh her down throughout the entire book. After that first misunderstanding, she trusted Cooper’s feelings for her and never doubted their relationship again.

For a debut novel, I thought SOMETHING SO RIGHT was well written. Once you took out the sex, what was left of the story was very enjoyable. I did notice a few mistakes where I don’t know if there was something wrong with my copy, or if these mistakes were missed by the editor and beta readers. Some words were missing at the beginning of a few sentences. In a dinner scene, they’re supposed to be having steak, but then it turns into chicken. At the beginning, it says that Cooper has won five Stanley Cups, but towards the end, it says he’s playing for his fourth Stanley Cup. The only reason I caught this discrepancy is because I thought it was odd that a player could win five Cups in the span of a 12-13 year career, at least in this century. These mistakes aren’t a big deal and they didn’t affect my rating, but I thought they were worth mentioning in the off chance the author reads my review and wants to correct them in a future edition.

SOMETHING SO RIGHT is told mostly in Parker’s POV, with a few chapters from Cooper’s POV. At this stage it appears to be a stand-alone and it comes with a beautiful HEA set four years into the future. I know I’ve brought up a lot of dislikes and issues, and it probably sounds like I hated this book, but I would happily read more from this author, who I think has a lot of potential.

My Rating: