Review: It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Chicago Stars #1

The Windy City isn't quite ready for Phoebe Somerville -- the outrageous, curvaceous New York knockout who has just inherited the Chicago Stars football team. And Phoebe is definitely not prepared for the Stars' head coach Dan Celebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind. Celebow is everything Phoebe abhors. And the sexy new boss is everything Dan despises -- a meddling bimbo who doesn't know a pigskin from a pitcher's mound.

So why is he drawn to the shameless sexpot like a heat-seeking missile? And why does the coach's good ol' boy charm leave cosmopolitan Phoebe feeling awkward, tongue-tied....and ready to fight?

The sexy, heartwarming, and hilarious "prequel" to Susan Elizabeth Phillip's This Heart of Mine -- her sensational bestsellng blockbuster -- It Had To Be You is an enchanting story of two stubborn people who believe in playing for keeps.

I took a break from what I was currently reading to check this book out. I'm not a huge fan of football; I'm more of rink bunny (LOL). For those of you who are like huh? That means I'm a huge hockey fan... huge female hockey fan who wouldn't mind playing with a hockey player :0) But I liked this book good enough. I picked it up because I thought it would be a bit like Rachel Gibson's Chinooks Hockey Team series except with football players instead of hockey players. It does remind me of it a bit except I don't care to dive into the football lingo and game scenes that much.

The pacing is so different from what I've been reading. It really is a love/hate relationship for the longest time. I don't know, maybe it's all those YA, PNR, and UF's that I've been reading where girl meets boy and falls in love right away that has me used to the fast falling-in-love pace. They don't end up together at all until towards the end of the book. No, that's not a spoiler. We all know that these type of books are the HEA type of books. The joy of reading this book is reading about the couple's journey to getting to their HEA.

The love/hate relationship is mostly believable in this story. I understand everyone deals with trauma and secrets differently, but there have been books where I've yelled or induced a mini-stroke by rolling my eyes too much because I just couldn't believe their actions or reactions in a certain situation. This book isn't like that at all. Like I said, I think it's just me getting used to a nice, slow, realistic pacing of falling for someone vs. something that happens quite quickly in other books.

I don't have any quips about the character developments at all. There were times this had me chuckling out loud. It definitely does remind me of Rachel Gibson's fourth book in the Chinooks Hockey Team series where, instead of the daughter, it's the widow who inherits the hockey team. Her husband was quite older. And of course she has to deal with this guy who thinks she's just a bimbo and was in marriage for the money and etc.

If you're a fan of football and/or you enjoyed Rachel Gibson's books or Jaci Burton's Play by Play series, I think you will enjoy this. This isn't one of my top books, but I liked it enough. I just prefer hockey vs. any other sport and I think I just prefer Rachel Gibson's writing as well. Do I think you should pass up this book? No, give it a shot. I think it's a good story and was well worth my time. Check it out and let me know what you think! If you've read it, do you like football or sports in general? Is that why you liked or disliked this book?