REVIEW: Pitcher Perfect by Tessa Bailey
Dear Tessa Bailey,
Pitcher Perfect is book 4 in the Big Shots series which commenced with Fangirl Down – a series which was originally a duology and expanded because characters who needed a HEA kept appearing. Robbie Corrigan is one half of the rookie pair who play hockey for the Bearcats and wear matching sweatshirts saying “orgasm donor”. They’ve appeared in the previous two books largely as comic relief but somewhere in the last half of Dream Girl Drama, Robbie was bowled over (heh) by pitcher, Skylar Page. This book starts from that scene but is told from Robbie and Skylar’s points of view instead.
Unfortunately, Robbie does not make a good impression on Skylar. Her first words to him are “fuck you”, because she overhears him bragging about the woman in his bed the night before, clearly showing himself to be a manwhore. She is not impressed, to say the least. But he is smitten.
Her scowl made him wonder how much a bouquet of long stem roses cost.
After winning a bet which leads to Skylar and Robbie having a coffee date after the game, Robbie begins to see himself through her eyes and he doesn’t like what he sees. He feels like he’s blown his chance with the woman of his dreams before it’s begun, all because he had not been living up to the standards he was raised by.
He huffed a laugh, shook his head. “Damn. I would give my left—”
“Slow down. Think about your words.”
“Arm. I was going to say arm. I would give it up to rewind this morning and start over.”
Skylar is the sister of Elton Page, a college baseball player who was sniffing around Chloe (from Dream Girl Drama) – much to Sig’s dismay. Elton’s best friend and a fellow baseballer, is Madden Donahue. Skylar has long had a crush on Madden but he doesn’t appear to see her that way. Skylar believes she has no game and when Robbie offers a deal to Skylar in order to be able to spend some time with her, she decides to go for it. Skylar will partner with Robbie for the annual family “Page Stakes” – a family competition of challenges which is Skylar’s family’s weird way of showing love to one another – and fake date him to get Madden’s attention. (Madden is Elton’s Page Stakes partner).
Initially, Robbie thinks he has no chance at all with Skylar and offers to be her Page Stakes partner partly as an apology for his behaviour when they first met and partly because he just wants to be in her life. Subsequently Skylar asks Robbie for some instruction in the sexual arts – clearly he has a lot of experience. This is obviously something Robbie is very keen on on the one hand (of course) but on the other he worries he will become too attached to Skylar by getting physical, believing she’s all in for Madden. Still, he can’t bring himself to say no.
When his team mates find out about the fake dating arrangement between Robbie and Skylar, they have some strong (and hilarious) reactions.
“She’s in love with him. We’re going to pretend to date, so she can make him jealous.”
Mailer’s laughter abruptly cut off. “What the fuck did you say?”
Sig appeared at the end of the locker row. “Yeah. What?”
Burgess came into view beside Sig. “Against my better judgment, I, too, would like some context.”
Of course, this was how Robbie finally got the vets to pay attention to him.
It had to be this.
“It’s not a big deal. I’m just helping her out,” Robbie started.
Sig raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Well, for starters, I acted like a presumptuous dickwad at the game this morning. Her words, not mine. I made her uncomfortable.” Grandpa Nick would have been ashamed of him. He couldn’t say that part out loud. “This felt like the least I could do.”
“I’d say an apology is the least you could do,” Burgess pointed out. “Pretending to date to make another guy jealous sounds above and beyond the typical mea culpa.”
“Mea what?” Robbie griped. “Stop talking like you’re in the Bible.”
Burgess nearly stared a hole through Robbie’s face.
After spending some time with Skylar and commencing their flirting/dating/sex lessons, he realises he’s in deep and his plans change. He’s in it to win it now.
“Deep breaths.” Burgess had been acting a lot fatherlier lately. He was a father, but ever since he’d hooked up with his daughter’s au pair, he’d been more . . . nurturing. In like a super grudging kind of way, but still. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
Robbie did as he was instructed, eventually calming the storm in his belly caused by the mental image of Skylar and Madden walking down the aisle of a church together. “Is it always this hard when you meet the one?”
“Yes,” Sig and Burgess said in unison.
“Did you ever think life would be easier if you’d just never met her to begin with?”
“No.” Again, in unison.
I admit I was a bit worried that this would be a story where Robbie turned his life around in order to win a girl and not from any real sense of conviction about his past behaviour. But the novel threads the needle very well here. It’s clear early on that Skylar was a wake up call and a reminder about how he’d been raised and what he really valued. He’d let professional hockey and all the women who threw themselves at him go to his head and he realised he needed to do better. This was quite aside from whether he would win Skylar. Yes, she was the impetus but the motivation came from him and wasn’t dependent on her. It made a difference to me that Robbie wasn’t changing his behaviour to please someone else – he changed his behaviour because he realised he was behaving badly. (It wasn’t that he he’d had a lot of sexual partners which was the bad behaviour part – it was the way he did it. To be clear, he didn’t ignore consent and was never violent or aggressive. But he treated women like a commodity, there for his pleasure. He didn’t bother to remember their names or think much about their feelings and he didn’t speak respectfully about them later on. He didn’t make promises he wasn’t going to keep, but he wasn’t exactly a good guy either.)
Not only for this fairy-tale relationship he was definitely crazy for pursuing, but . . . for himself. It took meeting Skylar to realize how much respect he’d been lacking for himself and others. His treatment of women was a big part of that, wasn’t it? Yeah, he’d been ignoring those lessons he’d learned growing up, trading them for a good time.
Skylar’s mother married Elton’s dad when Skylar was 12. They are a close family. Elton and Skylar are siblings, Elton’s dad is Skylar’s dad. But all the other members of the Page family went to Brown. Skylar flubbed the interview and didn’t get in. She’s plays softball at Boston University where she is a senior but she feels the sense of failure keenly, especially when her “all Brown all the time” family never seem to let her forget it. Robbie has a golden retriever kind of energy but when it comes to Skylar he’s very perceptive. He sees quickly that “his girl” feels less than and he simply will not have it. Robbie has no trouble sticking up for Skylar and reminding her family she’s enough all on her own. The fact is she’s a talented and successful athlete all on her own and he’s pissed her family don’t acknowledge that the way she deserves.
Skylar, for her part, has felt she doesn’t quite belong in the Page family. She’s extremely competitive but her parents and brother take that to a whole other level. With Robbie on her team, for the first time she feels that sense of belonging she’s been missing. It doesn’t take long before she’s wondering if she really was in love with Madden at all (I do not classify this as a spoiler). As for Madden, readers will pick up the cues pretty quickly about where his head is at.
Skylar lacks confidence in herself as a woman and a sexual being. She hasn’t had much success in the dating department so far and worries that she will be a passing interest for Robbie, that she will not be able to compete with all the beautiful women who routinely throw themselves at him. For Robbie, it’s never in doubt. He thinks Skylar is drop dead gorgeous and has no idea why she doesn’t already know that but also, he’s so gone for her from the second he meets her, he basically doesn’t even see other women. (I am very fond of this trope. It’s a feature common in Tessa Bailey books, particularly this series. He falls first and falls hard. I also have a lot of time for the “touch her and die” energy.)
I had a few small quibbles near the end. Robbie had been worried about not being taken seriously by his team mates. I would have liked to have seen more about how that worked out on the ice and felt more of a sense of maturity in his game as well as in his relationships. And, I would have liked to have seen a little more of the Page Stakes actually.
The entire book (apart from the epilogue which takes place 5 years later) takes place in the space of less than a month. I did believe they fell in love but most of the courtship was over the course of a week – that trip to HEA-land was faster than the speed of light. Still, I was happy enough to go along for the ride.
Robbie is a delightful doofus in many ways but I loved how he stepped up for Skylar and for himself and I loved how Skylar gained confidence, in part by seeing herself through his eyes. There is plenty of humour, along with Bailey’s trademark scorching hot sex scenes and I loved the banter between the hockey players on the Bearcats and between Skylar and Robbie themselves.
Grade: B+
Regards,
Kaetrin
She really does thread the needle beautifully. I was impressed. I loved this one so much and it became my favorite in the series, which was a happy surprise.
@Angie: I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Robbie Corrigan but he was also a happy surprise for me.