Rating: 5🌈
I’ve been waiting for this story since I started the series. It’s been hinted at throughout each book and Coach Asa Dawson is such a powerful person that he’s been able to help make each couple’s story and romance more interesting and real as it developed through the framework of the team and game.
So the references to a past drama and a unrequited love story thread for Coach just drew me in. I wanted to know what happened.
Winning The Season, the penultimate book in the Miami Piranhas series, is Beth Bolden’s love letter to the Coach of this mixed team of players of all sexualities and athletic backgrounds.
He’s been the glue to hold them together and the force to make them into a winning team.
So now he gets his own HEA.
But not without several hurdles, a bunch of painful barriers to overcome, and major forgiveness over past years wounds to old relationships.
I really loved the characters here. They rang so true. Scott Callaway, the old friend since college. He and Asa a unit since their college football playing days, through the years as a team as coaches on the smaller fields as they worked up through to the university level, always together.
Their history, deep friendship, passion for the game and each other, it all comes through so beautifully.
As does the painful experience when it all goes so badly.
The reunion is not a happy one. Nor should it be. The path back to each other is tough and paved with arguments and bad feelings. Which makes the real shift back into a truce and then more so rewarding and heartwarming.
The ending will bring out the tissues and a few sniffles I expect. I wasn’t expecting that. But it was perfect.
Winning The Season is my favorite of the series. There is one more book to come. I can’t believe it would be any better a series finale than this but I’m looking forward to reading it.
Until then, I’m highly recommending Winning The Season (Miami Piranhas Book 4) by Beth Bolden.
Miami Piranhas series:
🔹Playing For Keeps #1
🔹Playing The Player #2
🔹Playing By The Rules #3
🔹Winning The Season #4
🔹Playing Deep #5 – Feb 15,2023
Goodreadshttps://www.goodreads.com › showWinning the Season (Miami Piranhas, #4) by Beth Bolden
Description:
Coach Asa Dawson has fallen wildly in love only twice in his life.
First with football.
Then with Scott Callaway.
But Scott isn’t just the one who got away.
He’s the one person—the one man—Asa hoped might finally show him how all-consuming passion could be.
Instead, fate (and football) intervened and they never got the chance to explore their attraction. Their friendship ended in ruins, Scott left, and Asa’s been torn between hating him and loving him for the last seven years.
Asa doesn’t think he’ll ever see him again, but when his bad habits catch up to him and he doesn’t have a choice but to accept help, he’s horrified—and exhilarated—to learn Scott’s been hired to assist him.
With the final stretch of the Piranhas season falling during the holidays, maybe what Asa and Scott have needed this whole time was a little Christmas magic to remind them the most important job isn’t to win the season—but to finally win each other’s hearts.
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Unless it’s noted, all books reviewed have been purchased by the reviewer
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 