Home Field Advantage

Second chance romances are my jam and this book has been sitting on my kindle for a while just waiting for me to read. These two definitely have some history and it’s a bit heartbreaking, I devoured every single page to finally get down to the bottom of what happened.

As eager as I was to learn both sides of their story, I truly enjoyed taking a look into their past and seeing how amazing they were together. It wasn’t long, but you could definitely tell how strong their connection was. So why did it have to end…

I’m very much a believer of things happening for a reason, as heartbreaking as it was to visit their past, the time away was definitely something they needed. Quinn was at a point in his life where he needed to make some serious life changes or he’d lose everything. But now that he’s finally on his way towards getting through his addiction and just living a better life. He deserves to have all the happiness in the world.

As much as I did enjoy this one, we were definitely going in circles with these two. They really just needed to clear the air.

I think my favorite moments were the ones where they were doing something they both love and that’s working on old cars. It was another side to their relationship that I just absolutely loved. It simply two friends, hanging out and enjoying what they love to do.

Even though I didn’t love it as much as I hoped, I’m looking forward to the next book.

**A COMPLIMENTARY READER’S COPY WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW. ALL OPINIONS ARE MY OWN.**

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Mary Jo –
This was an emotional book for me. It gives you a firsthand view of what it’s like to not only acknowledge your addiction, the things you have to do to fight that addiction, but to see yourself the way the world sees you.

Quinn Lowry is living that life. The life after coming clean to his family, his friends, and his teammates. He’s also looking for a second chance at the football career he threw away because of his addiction.

Being clean and sober is only as good as it lasts. As much as Quinn wants back on the football field, he knows that he will sacrifice that dream if he has to choose between sobriety and football. He’s hoping that the life lessons he’s learned in that year will give him the confidence to make the team and to play well.

And he’s handling training camp like an old pro – until he sees her. Natalie Griffith. One-time lover and the person who was responsible for airing his dirty laundry in such a way that he had to deal with it. A little resentful, yes. But not entirely because she wrote the article, but because she broke his heart, not once but twice. And the second time wasn’t anything to do with him, it was because she wanted to make a name for herself as a sportswriter.

Natalie didn’t realize how seeing Quinn again would affect her. She knew that he was trying to make the team, but what she didn’t know was how her boss was expecting her to write an expose on Quinn, to dig up dirt on him.

Quinn and Natalie try to resolve their past differences but the more they try to put the past behind them, it’s the present that realize they want to make better.

Ruthie –
This is the third book in the series and whilst you could read this as a standalone, really, why would you not want to read the other two books first? Both players in those books are part of the team and the couples appear in this book too. I love sports romances, and this one does an amazing job of dealing with a difficult and danger-strewn topic in a respectful, but not preachy way. I recommend it to you.

Quinn has been out of the game for two years after battling addiction to drink and drugs. He is back and hoping to prove his worth with a new team. He could not believe it when his first love, Natalie, who also walked out on their relationship with no good explanation and then wrote a newspaper story about his fall from grace, is the reporter attached to his new team. He has coping mechanisms for many things, but Natalie? That is going to be a stretch.

As he and Natalie slowly come to terms with what happened when they were in college and acknowledge the reasons why it all went so wrong, they naturally warm to each other. The chemistry has not gone, and maybe one more time to say good-bye… yep, we all know that isn’t going to work, but it is such fun watching it all come together. I really liked that even though they had a deep understanding and love of sport as a good basis for a connection, they also loved old cars and making them work again. It was a fun sideline which worked when there was a need to move away from the intensity of their working lives.

As much as Quinn has to perform on the field, Natalie was under pressure to constantly find bits of scandal or rumour to publish for her boss. I thought the demands, and the expectations of pushing ethical boundaries – especially when attached to a team – were dealt with in a way which surely made every reader think about what are the boundaries of privacy for public figures. Using Matt to be the main subject was a great way to set up Quinn’s story and give Matt a voice too.

We get to see other members of the team too, with hints as to other possible contenders for future installments; we must all be rooting for Matt to get his family back together soon.

Thank you, Liz Lincoln, for a really meaningful addition to the series.

Reviewers received a free copy of this book to read and review for Wicked Reads.

I love second chance stories, and if they’re matched with a sports romance, much better. Natalie and Quinn broke up eight years ago, and didn’t get any closure. Natalie just up and left, and next day sent a two sentence email breaking up with Quinn. Quinn went on to professional football and lost his career due to addictions, both pills and booze. Painfully, he clawed his way out of his addictions, trained hard to get into NFL conditions again, and found a team that took a chance on a recovering alcoholic.

I loved this part of the story, the fact that a football team signed up a former pro athlete who went down and fought to get in playing form again. I admired Quinn’s character for the fortitude and ambition that he showed by working harder than anybody in his team, and working with a counsellor to exorcise his demons and develop a support system. This is a guy who broke down under several situations: his parents behavior, his father’s hostile attitude and constant criticism towards him, and the loneliness he lived in.

Natalie loved Quinn when she broke up with him. She feels they have no closure because they never discussed their situation. She’s had other relations but no other man measures up to Quinn. Now she’s working as the press agent for their team and they have to work together. There’s tension and hostility and guilt, and above all, chemistry, yearning, and desire.

I loved the story once Quinn and Natalie started talking. From the beginning to approximately 40% of the story, the story felt like it was zigzagging. Quinn and Natalie were sometimes cordial, other hostile, they were dithering about their feelings, they wanted to talk, they wanted to ignore each other. Natalie was paralyzed by indecision and guilt, and they kept on dithering for a while. The writing also felt a little choppy. Once they started talking and developing a friendship of sorts, connecting through their mutual love of working with cars, the story took off and the writing got smoother. And very much entertaining! I liked their positive attitudes, their desire to connect and be friends. There are secondary characters who, like always, add a lot of warmth to the story because they are like family. Overall, a good read!

Natalie has been given the chance of a lifetime. She’s a sports journalist that is given exclusive access to the Milwaukee Dragons. The thing is, her college boyfriend has just been given the chance to play for them. Natalie & Quinn’s breakup was not pretty & it coincided with his fall from football. It’s going to be awkward to be around him. Why couldn’t she shut off her feelings for him?

Quinn can’t believe he has another chance. After seeking treatment for his addiction & regaining his form, he should be on top of the world. Instead, his unresolved feelings for Natalie & his fears of relapsing keep him distracted. In college, he was upset about her article about his addiction & fall from grace even though she was kinder than other reporters were. Should he forgive Natalie & give them another chance?

This was a an excellent second chance romance. Natalie’s dad was an alcoholic & she couldn’t deal with Quinn going down the same path. She continued to blame herself for what happened to him even though the article she wrote was compassionate & allowed everyone to see he was human. When they came back into contact, Quinn couldn’t forgive her for the article & he didn’t trust her to not do it again. Quinn has to man up & realize it was his problem & results. Natalie just did her job. I really enjoyed reading of their second chance.

I’m a sucker for second chances and sports romances, so I was a little disappointed with this one. The story starts out okay, but the first half was a lot slower than I cared for. Quinn and Natalie’s back and forth, ‘I want you, but I don’t want to want you’ grew tiresome. Once we’re finally given the whole backstory, and that took a while, I understood why they felt that way, but it, like a lot of other things in the story, was repetitive. Once they finally get together, the pace did pick up, but we went from the push and pull between these characters to marathon sex sessions. I’m talking page after page, and considering this pair isn’t all that adventurous, there was only so much ground to cover. I ended up skimming a lot of that in the second half of the book to get back to where this relationship was going. As far as the romance, Home Field Advantage runs the usual formula, and the bit of angst to test the relationship was glaringly easy to see coming. Looking back over it, I think I enjoyed the football talk more than the relationship with this book. I didn’t hate the story, but I didn’t love it either, and it’s not one I’ll think of in terms of books I would read again.

I enjoy second chance romances. I also enjoy a character that has issues (be it an addiction or otherwise). So when I read the blurb for Home Field Advantage, I wanted to read it. I am glad that I did because this book was a great read.

When I first started reading Home Field Advantage, I didn’t get a good vibe from it. Natalie was too focused on Quinn for me to get any sense of who she was. Quinn came across as a bitter jerk who was aloof when it came to his teammates. But, as I continued to read the book, a miracle happened. The characters that I thought I had pegged changed. I loved it!!

The author did a fantastic job of showing how hard it was for Quinn to stay sober. Instead of glossing it over and making his recovery easy, the author threw obstacles in his way. I also liked that his recovery was linked with therapy. He could discuss what was happening that week with his therapist and feel better about it.

I wasn’t a fan of Natalie at the beginning of the book. But as I continued to read the book, I started to understand her. I understood why she ghosted Quinn after being together a year. She was terrified of being with someone like her father. It doesn’t excuse the article, though. I thought that was low. I also didn’t understand why she didn’t tell her boss to take a flying leap earlier in the book. It would have saved a whole lot of heartache and misunderstanding.

I liked Quinn. He captured my heart right from the get-go. His pain and anger at Natalie weren’t an over exaggeration. He had every right to be upset with her. He was slow to trust her, which again, I didn’t blame him for. I also didn’t blame him for flipping out when he saw her email. If I had the background that those two did, I would have done the same thing.

The romance angle of the book was right on. Quinn and Natalie’s feelings for each other never went away. That became clear when they started hanging out together. Their feelings went to a whole different level, the more connected they became.

Quinn and Natalie also had insane sexual tension. It radiated off them whenever they were near each other. That tension grew and grew until it exploded into one of the hottest sex scenes I have read to date. What impressed me was that the author was able to keep that sexual tension present throughout the rest of the book.

The end of Home Field Advantage was typical for this genre. Everyone got their HEA. I am wondering who the next book will be about? Matt and Cee? Oh man, I hope so because my heart was broken for both of them in this book!!!

Liz Lincoln has another outstanding, well written sport romance novel. Quinn and Natalie are the perfect couple gone bad. Quinn was a alcoholic NFL wide receiver and Natalie was a new sports reporter who needed a story to get the job she craved. He blamed her story for his downfall from football. She felt guilty despite having written the truth without using anything she learned from him personally. Several years later they are thrown back together when he joins Milwaukee Dragon’s, where she’s one of the sports reporters. This is their story. Trials and tribulations, emotions and guilt, thru the backdrop of the football season, highlights this book. They have a common interest in redoing old cars. That helps bringing them on common ground to change emotions, and build new. I highly recommend this well written fast moving, emotional novel. You’ll need to find out if love can conquer all. I can’t wait for her next book. I know it will be a fun loving, sports dictated romance with a lesson of life hidden within.

Natalie Griffith is working her dream job at Sports and Leisure News Today (SLNT) as a sports beat writer under her idol, Ellen Blake. She has been assigned to follow the Milwaukee Dragons’ football team for the season. What Natalie didn’t expect was that Quinn Lowry, her ex, would now be on that team. She may be still feeling a little guilty for the article she wrote on him a few years ago.

Quinn cannot believe he is seeing Natalie in person again after all these years. She broke his heart when she left him, and then again when she wrote her article. Now he just wants to concentrate on making the team and doing a good job.

The more Natalie and Quinn see each other it becomes obvious that they both still are attracted to each other so they agree to one night together to get it out of their systems. So much for well thought out plans! LOL These two realize that one night is just not enough and quickly things start to escalate. Pretty soon they both find themselves falling hard but are both afraid to voice their feelings. As these two both take a long look at their lives they realize that they both need to make some changes if they ever want to find their happy ending.

I enjoyed this story. Both of these characters had demons from their past stopping them from having their one true love happy ending. They both needed to really dig deep down and come to terms with a few things in order for that to happen but when they finally did it was all worth it! I loved how they liked to work on old cars….that was fun and interesting to read. Overall a fun addition to this series.

Home Field Advantage is my first book by Liz Lincoln and she had me hooked from the very beginning. I really enjoy her writing style and loved her ability to pull me in and wrap my heart around her characters. I fell in love with Natalie and Quinn. They have both been hurt, both scared, and now shielded. My heart hurt for them and what they have been through. The pain and hurt they both feel from their past was evident and still an issue for both of them. Their attraction and chemistry jumped off the pages. The unresolved feelings and issues an obstacle neither could ignore.

I thought this was a beautifully written second chance romance where both parties learned to not only forgive each other, but themselves. I love a great sports romance and am grateful to have found another author who writes them extremely well. I can’t wait to explore more of her titles!

Quinn is the comeback kid trying to make good. Natalie is his lost love and Achilles heel. The story comes together slowly as we learn about each of the characters and what makes them tick. As their passions ignite there is plenty of steam and opportunities for them to explore all their feelings for each other. Great detail about CTE and football injuries which makes for a realistic take on the characters lives.