Catching Jordan - Miranda Kenneally

Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally
Series: Hundred Oaks #1
Published on November 8, 2011 by Sourcebooks Fire

ONE OF THE BOYS

What girl doesn't want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn't just surrounded by hot guys, though-she leads them as the captain and quarterback of her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys and that's just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university.

But everything she's ever worked for is threatened when Ty Green moves to her school. Not only is he an amazing QB, but he's also amazingly hot. And for the first time, Jordan's feeling vulnerable. Can she keep her head in the game while her heart's on the line?

So for those who don't know Hundred Oaks is a serie of contemporary romances/coming of age stories that usually focus on sports and that have Hundred Oaks as the setting, but they don't need to be read on order or anything, they work like companion novels where you get cameos from characters of the other books of the series but each one tells a complete story within itself. My first Hundred Oaks book was Breathe, Annie, Breathe which I loved so I was excited to get to the others unfortunately Catching Jordan didn't lived up to my expectations.

Let's talk about the good first. I really loved to see Jordan on American Football and not just playing but being the captain of all of these boys, just listening (oh, yeah I listened to the audiobook of this one) about her friendship with them and see how much they respected her despite all the tabus around a girl being on a sport that is majorly male was gold, I really which we had more books like this and if we did had I think more girls would want to participate on sports in general.

But despite the good, Jordan's dad showed a lot of the bad that comes from it too. He is really against her playing and his only reasoning is because she is a girl, look I get where his worries are coming from and if I was a parent I probably would worry sick about my kid being hurt but this is no good reason for his actions, the world is already hard enough there is no need for a parent to make it even more difficult for its kid. I was really glad that Jordan at least had her brother to lighten things up on her home situations, they had a few talks on the book that are really heartwarming.

Jordan overall was an okay character, she didn't stand out on anything despite her sport skills but one thing that made her look bad on my eyes his all the girl on girl hate on this book, she has no girlfriends at all and all her remarks about other girls are judging them on the way they acted and dressed, just don't do this girl don't go making assumptions about people you don't even know just because they're different from you, don't go down that road. I was sad that this was never dealt with.

Now on to the most annoying part of this story and the reason this one was such a disappoint for me: the fucking love triangle. Right at the start of the story Jordan has a heavy case of instalove for Ty, one of the team players, so I instantly thought that was the love interest and that their romance would develop slowly, but them it didn't develop slowly things got pretty serious pretty quickly but I thought maybe they will pass through some hard shit and have to move on you know and stuff, on the side way it was clear Jordan's best friend, Henry, had a really huge crush on her but it just NEVER crossed my mind that it would turn into a love triangle because JORDAN NEVER FUCKING THOUGHT OF HENRY THAT WAY EVER. But then, then someone tells Jordan about Henry's crush and suddenly BOOM love triangle on the way. I just ugh, I hated it so much first because wtf how you only realize you like someone because some else told you and two it dragged so freaking much, look if you realize you like some one else that isn't you boyfriend first action should be to broke things off with your boyfriend and think things over. But of course that is not what happens and we have drama, and more drama, and basically all the possible love triangle drama.

So yeah, as you can see the love triangle really annoyed me it was unnecessary and dramatic and juvenile and exactly what I don't want on my books, still there was some positive messages about girls on sports and good friendships between a girl and a group of boys. If you want to read some of the Hundred Oaks books I would recommend passing this one up and getting to Breathe, Annie, Breathe, thought I still want to get to the other books of this series.

Breathe, Annie, Breathe - Miranda Kenneally

Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally
Series: Hundred Oaks #5
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on July 15, 2014
Pages: 319
Genres: Contemporary, Sports, New Adult

Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

Amazon • The Book Depository • Goodreads 

From the bestselling author of Catching Jordan comes a brand new contemporary YA you won't forget.

The finish line is only the beginning...

Annie hates running. No matter how far she jogs, she can't escape the guilt that if she hadn't broken up with Kyle, he might still be alive. So to honor his memory, she starts preparing for the marathon he intended to race.

But the training is even more grueling than Annie could have imagined. Despite her coaching, she's at war with her body, her mind-and her heart. With every mile that athletic Jeremiah cheers her on, she grows more conflicted. She wants to run into his arms...and sprint in the opposite direction. For Annie, opening up to love again may be even more of a challenge than crossing the finish line. "Breathe, Annie, Breathe is an emotional, heartfelt, and beautiful story about finding yourself after loss and learning to love. It gave me so many feels. Her best book yet." - Jennifer L. Armentrout, New York Times bestselling author of Wait for You

I had already heard of the Hundred Oaks series a long time ago, but I was always scared to read because sports isn't really my thing (at all) and o the idea of reading a book were sports are a major part of the story? Yeah, it didn't sounded like something I would enjoy. But time passed, people keeped recommended this series and now that I'm much more into contemporary I decided to try and start with Breathe, Annie, Breathe (I know, it's the 5th of the series but they all can be read as stand alone).

Me and Annie started on the wrong foot, 30% in on the book and I was flying through this book but couldn't really get a read of her character and feelings, also the romance started with some instalust - which I think is fine and natural but it wasn't my ideal scenario when one of the parts of the romance is grieving, I thought "no, this is too soon, maybe I'll be the black sheep and Kenneally' books won't work for me". I was wrong, very very wrong.

Annie grew on me as a character, she is extremely determined and has so much to overcome on this book, until this 30% we basically got a view of her problems: the lack of friends, her difficult relationship with her mother and her fight against her desires and her guilt from moving on with her boyfriend. It was great to see her growing as an individual person and finding out who she was without being a girlfriend, this was why the instalust gave a bad feeling at first - Annie first needed to find herself before going to another relationship.

Of course Jeremiah is the perfect guy, he has some issues of his own to figure out and Annie does help him, but he also gave Annie her time and his friendship which was something necessary for her growth. Their romance was beyond, just beyond. They had an incredible chemistry right from the beginning, their first scene already made me laugh out loud and see their develop a friendship was heaven, it made me ship them more and more throughout the book so when they finally got together was very, very shippy.

Me on the scene at the hospital 

We had a lot of family presence, we got to know (or re-know for those who read the other books maybe? Idk) Jeremiah's family and I have to say that the scene with his PopPop was one of my favorites, was definitely the one that I laughed out loud most - their banter was gold! I would have liked more the presence of Annie's Mother, their issues kind of resolve themselves but I needed more honest conversations between them. Annie's friends too could have used more development - I just felt extremely uncomfortable on their first interaction (one of the girls basically corners Annie into going shopping with them), I was glad afterwards that it happened of course because it opened the doors for Annie get to find fun and have more friends on her life, but still it was awkward at first.

And about my fear that the sports part would bored me or that I would dislike this aspects? LOL I ended up with an urge to go running. Disclaimer: I never runned one day of my life, seriously, never, okay maybe sometimes to catch the bus but that was it, and I have been sedentary for like years and years, I would probably die on the first 5 minutes but I kind of really want to try now because it was so amazing to read about Annie's little victories at each run and how much it helped her to deal with her grief.

In case you didn't noticed yet I loved this book and can't wait to read more of Kenneally's other Hundred Oaks books. Absolutely recommend to lovers of contemporary romance, that like their books fluffy but not all fluffy, or people who like too read books about tough issues but doesn't like the general sadness of those books. And of course runners (or aspirings runners).