reading for the second time. I still love this one!!!

Definition:
Hooker is one of the positions in rugby league football. Usually wearing jersey number 9, the hooker is one of the team's forwards. During scrums the hooker plays in the front row, and the position's name comes from their role of 'hooking' or 'raking' the ball back with the foot.

Ronan Fitzpatrick is known as the best hooker in the world of rugby. He has been force to take a break from playing, after getting into a bloody fight with one of his teammates and putting the other guy in the hospital. The reason for the fight was that Ronan discovered that his mate was sleeping with his long-time girlfriend. Feeling fed-up with everything in his life, Ronan decides to escape to New York City for a while; he's looking to spend his days at the gym training and perhaps having a few one night stands with no strings attached, because the last thing he needs is to get his heart crushed by another woman. His plans are very clear until he meets a beautiful hermit...

Annie Catrel is the most successful media expert executive in New York city, she works for Davidson & Croft Media and on her own time she's also anonymously running a popular celebrity blog. Annie has a great internet persona, well known and celebrated by the public and her online friends but in real life she's shy and socially awkward. Nobody knows she is the person behind The New York's finest blog and since her boss allows her to do most of her job from home, the Annie of real life doesn't really have any friends and seldom interacts with other people. Annie runs into Ronan at a famous restaurant but even though she doesn't really know who is, she can tell his famous. She is turned on by his sexy appearance and appalled by what he is wearing, so she snaps a picture of him and features a funny article about him on her blog; little did she know that the next day she was going to be put in charge into a media campaign to help turn Ronan from bad boy, to golden boy, to advance his career and make him more known in the US. The moment Ronan meets Annie he's mesmerize by her, he can see through her baggy clothes and her anxiety, so he embarks on a mission to get into her pants but after he sees her eating a chocolate eclair the man is a goner, and his as well as Annie's worlds will become completely upside down...

I am not going to say more because this is one of those stories that will completely surprise you and the least you know the best it will be. I can only promise that this book is not just another boy meets girl, romantic story where opposites attract. You will fall in love with both characters deeply and will also laugh, blush and swoon a lot and often. I loved the back stories of both characters; I could totally relate to Annie's insecurities and unattractive snort laugh and Ronan's character was intense about everything he would do and say, I experienced him with every fiber of my being. There were so many layers to this story and as you read you find yourself craving more and more.

In my opinion, the narrators did a decent job at the Irish accents. At times they sounded weird to me, but I'm not sure if that was me getting used to them, if the accents were maybe not super consistent, or if I was just comparing them to the Scots accents that Davina Porter does so amazingly with the Outlander books series.


A bit silly and insta-love, especially on his part. The timing seemed weird, in that suddenly it'd say "the past two weeks had been great" which felt like a cop-out to trying to prevent the insta-love by being able to say No, there's been passage of time!
She seemed completely contradictory in that she was so painfully cripplingly shy and anxious but didn't seem to really have this problem around our guy? And it really only cropped up when convenient.
I was pleased that the cliche that happened was actually the 2nd or 3rd one on my list (in that I thought originally that Him finding out her secret identity would be the major issue, but then he found out pretty early and was okay with it, then using it to manipulate the situation, so the follow-up of her finding out that he'd known all along was ultimately the major climax.)
Though it did feel it could have been shorter because they both were so in love so quickly--often one party has fallen in love but the other takes longer to realize their feelings and this is why the book is lasting longer, waiting for the revelation.
Also, for the guy to be so sexy and also have a dirty mind/mouth, it sure took a long time for them to have sex. And it felt a little like the Sub/Dom part was in there because it's popular nowadays, not that it super fit the characters. A little tame overall, but still tension and some steam.