Girl at Heart

G-rated, YA, baseball romance, review of audiobook

Charlotte (“Charlie”) Hastings, is in the spring of her senior year and is an extremely talented catcher and batter on her school’s all-male (other than her) baseball team. Her widowed father is a former Major League baseball player who has trained Charlie in baseball since she was four years old. After he retired from his baseball career, he got a degree in broadcasting and has worked ever since as one of the commentators for the Pittsburgh Pirates’ televised games. One of the perks of his employment are fabulous free seats for Charlie and one of her friends to attend all of the Pirates’ home baseball games.

Because her father is rich, Charlie lives in a huge mansion with its own private baseball diamond, swimming pool, and batting cage. Due to all of these amazing amenities and an extremely gregarious and generous father, Charlie had the potential to become one of the most popular girls in school. However, she’s an extreme introvert, and during her school years she has only made friends with three boys from her baseball team, Eric Sullivan, Kevin Jones, and Diego Escobar. Since they have been friends since early childhood, all of these boys are like siblings to her, but Eric is her favorite of the three. He and Charlie consider each other to be their BFF. He is a near neighbor, and her father has practically adopted him over the years, due to the fact that his wealthy parents are quite neglectful. Eric has had the huge advantage of being trained by Charlie’s dad right alongside Charlie, since they were both preschoolers. He is a fabulous pitcher who is currently being scouted by at least a dozen different professional baseball teams, but he feels guilty because there is very little chance that Charlie, as a woman, will be able to play baseball after high school.

Charlie has had a non-platonic crush on Eric for years, but she realizes, to her continual disappointment, that it is unlikely he will ever view her as anything but a sister. All the guys on the high school baseball team, after a rocky start her freshman year as the only girl on the team, have accepted her as “one of the guys.” And all is going well with her life, other than moderately painful regret about Eric, until he inadvertently rubs her face in the fact that he will never see her as a desirable, potential girlfriend by inviting a beautiful cheerleader, who is a classic Mean Girl, to the prom. Not only that, Charlie discovers that Kevin and Diego have also asked girls to the prom, and the three boys have made plans to hire a limousine to ferry them and their dates to the festivities. Since none of the boys, any more than Charlie, typically date, this in itself is a shocking aberration, but even more surprising—and very, very hurtful—is the fact that it did not occur to any of the boys to invite her to come along. When Charlie expresses her pained surprise at their casually callous neglect, the three boys laugh loud and long at the very thought of Charlie ever wanting to put on a dress and go to a dance. They obviously view her as a confirmed tomboy, since she habitually wears jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, never puts on makeup, and always keeps her hair hauled back into a messy ponytail that she stuffs under a baseball cap. When she assures them she would certainly like to go to their mutual senior prom, especially if her three best friends are going, Eric piles insult on injury by proclaiming in a loud, joking voice to the whole baseball team at their lunch table, “’Hastings here is in need of a prom date. Any of you dateless schmucks desperate enough to volunteer as tribute?’” Charlie is utterly insulted and humiliated at this insensitive mockery, and her intense emotional pain at Eric’s perceived betrayal sets off a major identity crisis.

First of all, I adored Charlie’s father. I was delighted to perceive that he is not portrayed as either of the two cliché, parental extremes habitually found in YA fiction—either clueless or cruel. He is a former Major League pitcher and extremely prosperous, but he is not a snob, and he has not raised Charlie to be one either. He has been widowed for the past 12 years, but there is no indication he has ever dated during that time. All his love has gone to Charlie as a devoted father. Most impressively, he has strongly nurtured her tremendous talent as a batter and catcher.

This book does not follow the usual pattern of YA romances where it is inevitable that the heroine with a male BFF ends up with him as a romantic partner. Quite the contrary, it is made clear from the beginning of the story (so much so that it is not a spoiler to bring it up) that, for Eric, the very idea of romance with Charlie feels incestuous to him, given that he views her as a sister.

I was actually glad that Eric is not the romantic hero of this story because, personally, I didn’t like him at all—which is to be expected, because he is Charlie’s main Antagonist in this book. I very much enjoyed the actual romance of this story, a slow-growing, well-developed relationship with Jace King, a fellow senior and the captain of Charlie’s baseball team. He is an extremely sympathetic, Beta, metrosexual male—and believably so, because he has four sisters, including a sweet, wonderful twin sister, who have strongly influenced his positive attitude toward girls and women.

Charlie has never dated and never been kissed—which is, admittedly, a very common type of heroine in G-rated, YA novels. That degree of innocence isn’t always well motivated, but it is fairly well done here. And, fortunately, Jace is not a “player,” but is almost as innocent as Charlie.

In terms of believability, I personally find it rather hard to imagine that any boy, even those she has been friends with since early childhood, would view Charlie as a “guy” rather than a very attractive girl, given that she is pretty, lean and fit, and has, by her own proud admission, a D-cup bust. That kind of precocious bra size inevitably gets a girl lots of male attention in high school—unfortunately, most often attention of the undesirable, sexual-harassment type. However, there is no indication in this book that anyone at all has ever noticed her gorgeous figure until—tah dah!–she has a makeover. I’m not personally at all fond of this eternally popular, romance-genre trope, but many romance readers are, and they may enjoy the section of this book dedicated to Charlie’s discovering within herself a previously unknown preference for a frilly version of female, gender identity.

There is also far more focus in this book on Charlie’s identity crisis as a secretly “girly girl” buried in male culture, rather than focusing on her passion for baseball. Readers who enjoy a true sports romance, with heavy focus on the heroine as a star athlete, might be somewhat disappointed at the comparatively weak focus on Charlie as an amazingly accomplished athlete in this book.

This novel is more of a dramedy than a romantic comedy, which is rather too bad in some ways, because there are many moments in this story which would have been ripe for a comic turn. However, on the plus side, the author never slides into overdone melodrama, which is a frequent flaw in many novels in the YA genre.

I read this book in Kindle format when it first came out, and this week I had the chance to experience it again as an audiobook, purchased as a bargain price through Amazon Whispersync. The narrator, Hallie Ricardo, does an excellent job of avoiding a major, irritating pitfall of far too many voice talents who narrate YA novels—voicing the heroine in a constant whine throughout the book. Instead, this narrator never whines when voicing Charlie, and she also does a good job acting out the parts convincingly for characters of both genders and all ages.

Finally, this G-rated novel is suitable for all ages. There is no drinking, smoking, drugs, swearing or sex. There are a few kisses, but no strong sense of sexual passion.

I rate this book as follows:
Heroine: 4 stars
Hero: 5 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 4 stars
Baseball Plot: 3 stars
Makeover Plot: 3 stars
Parent Plot: 5 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Audiobook Narration: 4 stars
Overall: 4 stars
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I have been patiently waiting for the next Kelly Oram book, and it was worth the wait.

Charlie, the only girl on the baseball team. Has pretty much been one of the guys and soon realizes. That her best friends don’t see her as a girl, and she wonders what she has been missing out on. And she decides to jump all in and figure out who she is. This story will make you laugh, make you cry and feel so much joy for these characters.

I loved this story and read it within one sitting. I missed Oram’s stories because it makes you feel all these emotions and reminds you of the joy of reading. You could feel what Charlie was feeling, the hurt, and it was fun being able to read about her journey.

Overall, I have to give this five Boundless stars. I can’t wait for more from Oram.

If you have a daughter, read this book together 🙂