ARC Review: Contract Season by Cait Nary (Trade Season #2)

Contract Season by Cait Nary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It was fun and the characters were very well developed. They both had their own lives and worlds outside of each other. I mean, one is a country music artist and the other is a hockey player so it's too be expected, but it's so easy for romance books to forget about the rest of the characters lives and only focus on them together. I appreciated the book allowing both characters to develop as separate people. And even with this, the story still focused on them and the slow burn relationship development.

The fake relationship was excellent too. It wasn't a super typical set up like for a high school reunion or because a great grandpa required the recipient to be married to get the money or whatever which made it interesting. The build up from the initial hook up, to them being outed, to using the contractual fake relationship to protect their careers seemed wild and felt very real at the same time. The romance developed very slowly through the fake dating and had a lot of domestic slow burn vibes.

Some other thoughts:

- Kiwi the cat was super cute and I loved a romance book character with a CAT instead of a dog.

- Absolutely zero on-page poetry or lyrics were present in this book. A+ work author would read your lack of lyrics again.

- Sea should have been shortened to Shea or Shay in the book. If it was Shea there was an opportunity for his contact name to be a stick of butter emoji in Brody's phone. Still cute inside jokey but easier for my brain to read the name correctly.

- Sea was a total drama babby approximately five times too many but he's a musician so being dramatique is what they're all about. I do wish some of the repetitive internal monologue was cut out but it didn't bother me much in the full scope of the book.

- Not too much on-page hockey! Reading hockey game play by plays in a book can get super boring and this book stayed away from it.

- Again, a pet CAT. Named KIWI!

- If you've read the first book you are aware there is a lot of on-page barfing. I am happy to report there is no on-page barfing here. Just a lot of casual mentions of throwing up.

Overall, a very enjoyable slow burn romance that had a very wild and unrealistic premise that still felt very real. Also, a pet cat!

I received an ARC copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.



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