Review: Scoring Points (A Lights Out story ) by H.L Day

Rating: 2🌈

“You can’t change what happened. But you can still change what will happen.

⁃ Sebastian Vettel.”

After reading Scoring Points by H.L. Day, my first thoughts were you had one job in this series , that was to write a book about Formula 1 racing and you’ve tossed the memo.

How did one author go so wrong in a multi author series about specific teams with specific drivers racing on certain circuit’s during a specified season and not write about racing?

First by not writing about the drivers themselves or anyone within the pit who’s directly in contact with the drivers and the actual action on the racetrack. By now, we’ve gotten a good idea of the various teams and their drivers, even on a superficial level, from the other books who mention the same races and events, albeit from different perspectives.

That’s been a great aspect of the series and an anticipatory factor in every new release to come.

But H.L. Day, whose works are often in my must rec list, has made some seriously ill conceived choices when it came time to plan out and write their book for this series.

Day chose to write about the team’s principals. What is a team principal?

“In Formula One, the team principal is the person who is in charge of a constructor team [team who builds the cars] and its personnel. They are usually responsible for issuing team orders and making day-to-day decisions. “

And they are extremely well paid for the job. Millions a year in fact. It’s a job that’s incredibly hard to get and harder to keep.

So Day chose to work the story around two competitive principals. That’s fine , except instead of it being a normal or. it’s all on a personal level. It’s nothing to do with racing but hurt feelings stemming from episodes when they raced karts as teenagers.

Not racing but sexuality. This really could be any other kind of book. Day just had to throw in racing stuff. And it shows.

Keep that in mind. After slogging through approximately 45%, I kept wondering why Day had made the barest of efforts at incorporating any racing into the story. Only Kurt Whitford’s character , at least, gets some semblance of showing he’s got a team that’s interested in racing.

Giovanni Rossi, whose team is mentioned extensively in all the other books, can hardly remember he’s got a team because he’s so obsessed with his sex life, past as well as present, and his revenge on Kurt. Believable he’s not, petulant he is, as Yoda would say.

By 50 % , I’m denying myself the pleasure of DNF, and page flipping , hoping for some racing somewhere in this story or anything that would ground it in this series. But no.

It’s a hopeless mess of two grown men in constant emotional turmoil over each other. Men, primarily Gio who is not a likable character, playing petty head games as payback, who in this actual situation would never be risking their teams, their drivers, or the millions and their careers this way.

Maybe another author could make a believable case for this scenario but Day never does.

Day uses tweets with events from other stories to make sure the reader knows this story is still “all about racing” . Such a format can’t replace actual depths of plotting and real characters.

So in the end do I recommend this ? No. Skip it, and read the others. You won’t be missing anything here.

Lights Out:

✓ Team Orders by RJ Scott

✓ Full Throttle by Lisa Henry

✓ Pole Position by Charlie Novak

✓ Scoring Points by HL Day

◦ Black Flagged by Emma Jaye 6/20

◦ Rookie Mistakes by Beth Laycock 6/27/2023

Buy Link:

Scoring Points

Description:

Can two warring team principals in the cutthroat world of F1 ever admit that there’s more to life than scoring points?

On the surface, Kurt Whitford has everything. A successful business. Good looks. Money. A famous popstar girlfriend hanging off his arm. And as the icing on the cake, he’s just been announced as Nebula’s new team principal. The downside? The opposition. It’s seventeen years since Kurt has seen the infuriating and irresistible Gio Rossi, but the man hasn’t changed a bit.

Whatever Kurt Whitford has, Giovanni Rossi can surpass. Well, except for the girlfriend. Despite needing to keep his sexuality on the down low, he’s not that far in the closet. And if Kurt thinks that Gio’s ready to let bygones be bygones, he couldn’t be more wrong. Gio hasn’t forgiven. Or forgotten.

As a long-rooted rivalry kicks off once more and sparks fly both on and off the track, can Gio and Kurt go head-to-head without the media getting wind of their true feelings? Or is their undeniable sexual chemistry about to prove their downfall?

This MM romance from H.L Day features enemies to lovers, opposing teams, secrets that go way back, and suppressed feelings. Set in the high-octane world of Formula 1, it features fast cars, spectacular crashes, heated rivalries, and of course, a HEA.

Each book in the Lights Out collection is a standalone story, and the books can be read in any order.