The Goal (Off-Campus #4) by
She's good at achieving her goals…
College senior Sabrina James has her whole future planned out: graduate from college, kick butt in law school, and land a high-paying job at a cutthroat firm. Her path to escaping her shameful past certainly doesn't include a gorgeous hockey player who believes in love at first sight. One night of sizzling heat and surprising tenderness is all she's willing to give John Tucker, but sometimes, one night is all it takes for your entire life to change.
But the game just got a whole lot more complicated.
Tucker believes being a team player is as important as being the star. On the ice, he's fine staying out of the spotlight, but when it comes to becoming a daddy at the age of twenty-two, he refuses to be a bench warmer. It doesn't hurt that the soon-to-be mother of his child is beautiful, whip-smart, and keeps him on his toes. The problem is, Sabrina's heart is locked up tight, and the fiery brunette is too stubborn to accept his help. If he wants a life with the woman of his dreams, he'll have to convince her that some goals can only be made with an assist.
Review: Sabrina James is a college senior with her eyes on the goal. She is working multiple jobs and enduring living at home with her grandmother and her nasty stepfather to save money for law school. She doesn't have time for any distractions, including relationships. So a one-night stand with hockey player John Tucker is all she wants. Even if John Tucker wants more. But life has bigger plans for these two.
I don't think this is a spoiler since it is revealed at the end of book three AND it is contained in the book summary that this is an accidental pregnancy plot. I know a lot of people hate that trope, but I am not one of them. I frequently enjoy them, but this one was just not my favorite. I think in part because this made the book feel very heavy and sad. These two are really young college kids, not adults set up to handle this unplanned event, and this is a significant, unexpected burden for them. Their relationship is robbed of a carefree time of dating and getting to know each other.
My other main gripe with this book is that Sabrina is just very difficult and fails to communicate for a lot of the book. John Tucker is an absolute angel to her from beginning to end but she remains elusive and refuses to accept that he plans to show up for her because he wants to. It just dragged on too long. I understand she has a lot of baggage from her childhood that explains her behavior, but it still felt too heavy handed.
The relatives in this book were awful. I had a hard time with Sabrina's grandmother allowing the stepfather to hang around. And some of the things said by Tucker's mother were hard to forgive. They were so isolated and Sabrina in particular comes from a rough background, which just contributed to how hard this all feels and how depressing parts of this were.
However, while this was my least favorite of the Off-Campus books, I still enjoyed it a lot and devoured this at a rapid pace. I loved the glimpses of characters from other books and how hard these two work together to figure it out.
However, a huge compliment to author Elle Tucker for the way she skillfully weaves the plot of these books together. Most series of interconnected love stories that I have read move chronologically from book to book. But these books all happen concurrently. So we get to see scenes that happen in other books from other character's perspectives in the different books. For instance, Tucker wakes up at one point in this book to a string of texts from his roommates roasting Dean after finding him in the bathtub with a certain toy. This scene happened in the last book but it's fun to see his reaction to it from his pov in this novel. Similarly, Tucker is acting secretive and gone a lot in the previous books. In this book, we finally find out where he was all those times he was off on his own.
I still don't love the casual hooking up culture prevalent in these books. But I love the love stories in each of them.
Stars: 3.5
Related Titles:
The Deal (Off-Campus #1) by Elle Kennedy
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