pat's Reviews > The Striker
The Striker (Gods of the Game, #1)
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by
To say I am disappointed, it’s like to say nothing at all. Ana Huang was to me an auto-read author, but given the recent downgrade of her works, I am not sure. (Don’t make me hate-read the new books.)
That being said, let’s dissect the Striker.
ASHER:
We have already seen snippets of him in the twisted series, and I was excited because this man had potential… that was completely wasted. The book is like 600 pages long and what do we really know about him? He’s a player (allegedly, not even a little bit in the book though), he’s a footballer, he likes to race cars, has daddy issues, and that’s probably all to him. For a book this long, his character seemed half-dimensional. Does he really grow throughout the book? Barely.
SCARLETT:
She’s a new character in Anaverse, but we quickly learn she’s Asher’s “nemesis”’s sister who did professional ballet but due to a car accident and a nerve injury she’s more of a teacher. In the beginning of the book, Asher tells her in a two second speech “the injury doesn’t define you”, but I have to disagree. All we know about her as a character is an aftermath of the car accident she suffered five years ago or a break up (which is also caused by the car accident.) We do love a I-will-myself-a-victim-in-every-situation heroine! 😍 (I wish I was exaggerating but I am not.)
THE RELATIONSHIP:
Honestly, Asher had better chemistry with Scarlett’s brother Vincent. I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment, but instead we got a very low stakes forbidden romance LOTS of forced proximity childish bullshit. This book would’ve been a 70 pages novella if they acted their age.
He’s the playboy that didn’t fuck around since chapter one and was obsessed with the fmc since chapter two. Boring!
She doesn’t want to act on her feelings (or rather a need to fuck) because she’s still coping from a breakup that happened FIVE YEARS AGO and told herself she would never date a football player, but if I’m being frank the breakup didn’t have anything to do with the sport, so I’m assuming plot armour (LOTS of it).
Sneaking around and lying to everyone (especially the overprotective brother/enemy) also felt flat when Vincent literally went to France like five chapters in.
Unfortunately the further in the book, the worse. What’s a book without conflict, right? But this conflict didn’t make any sense!!! Scarlett, after the car accident, feared more the place she was going to (some dance hall) than the place the car accident actually took place (some crossroad, a vehicle). She would break in hives whenever she thought of the dance hall, and maybe felt slight discomfort in vehicles. But to top it off, somewhere in the middle of the book, Scarlett starts to blow Asher’s racing WAY OUT OF PROPORTION. At first, it’s established he races from time to time to take the edge off after especially stressful matches only to make it seem like he’s an adrenaline junkie and risks his life every second he takes. No, if you want to change the plot, be consequential in your writing, readers aren’t stupid.
This stupid drama actually causes everyone’s favourite thing, namely a third act breakup 😍😍😍. But don’t worry, he has a single heart to heart conversation with his dad and his daddy and adrenaline (?) issues are solved! 🥰 And then he makes a single grand gesture (giving his sports cars away to his teammates) and she forgives him. All good.
SMUT/SPICE/PORN:
Whatever you call it. Ana Huang can write a good sex scene. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t deliver the quality nor quantity. 3.5 spicy scenes are all are mid at best. Usually there’s one scene that is iconic for the book (I still haven’t forgotten about the shoe in King of Sloth), but here it’s none. And Scarlett describes it as the best sex of her life? Or her sex life will be ruined because nothing ever will compare? Laughable. I am utterly disappointed on this front.
SIDE CHARACTERS:
Carina and Brooklyn are terrible friends. What’s up with romance authors thinking that “you better blow him or I will” is the best praise you can give! That’s disrespectful to female friendship and inherently rooted in misogyny. All they talk about is Asher and his relationship with Scarlett. Carina and Brooklyn must really have a fucking terrible lives if they both said another awful line “I live vicariously through you”. Insane statement to say to your friend!
OTHER COMPLAINTS:
Sorry Ana, but if you know nothing about football (soccer), don’t write books about it. Literally, football looks nothing like you described it. I saw in the author’s notes you had people helping you with it, but I don’t think they’re knowledgeable enough to give out expertise because it’s wrong.
Same goes for geography of London/England. People who helped you obviously tried to sabotaged you. While Scarlett is a born Londoner, it looks like more Emily in Paris: London spin-off. People say all the time don’t write books about locations you know nothing about, yet here we are. Yet here we are.
Another thing. British English. The speech is a mess. Once there’s dollars, once there’s pounds. Which one is it? Sprinkling typically British-English words like loo, knickers, arse, wanker, bloody, etc doesn’t make the whole thing British. American speed and overall American mindset was more than evident throughout the entire story.
Grammar. Besides obvious grammar and punctuation errors, the book is filled with metaphors and comparisons that don’t make sense — grammatically nor logically. Where is the editor??? Fire them and get a new one because they’re scamming you for money.
This whole random Pluto is a planet to me rant in the middle of the book? That’s been mentioned a few times? What’s up with that? I’m sensing Ali Hazelwood put you up for this. That was cringe and lame and corny in a very bad way.
Speaking of cringe, lame, and corny things, I thought we already exhausted the topic of dinosaur porn books in King of Pride already. It wasn’t quirky then, and it wasn’t quirky now. (But lowkey, I expected Asher to arrange a meeting with the dino porn author for their anniversary gift. Unfortunately, I got fuckass Isabella. Release me.) I hoped it was mentioned so many times because Velma something and Nate Raynolds (Jacob Elordi of Anaverse) will be the main characters of the King of Lust book.
Do you realise that Disneyland in Shanghai was opened in 2016, and if you wrote that Scarlett was there with her parents before they divorced when she was a child that would mean she was born around 2010. Tough math, I know.
PAPARAZZI. Everything about them was just so wrong and unrealistic. What you mean they stake out in front of Scarlett’s coffee shop (although she never went to one), but they never show up at the pub all the characters frequent every five chapters? What do you mean they were in the hospital when she/he was admitted to but never covered the charity match they played? What do you mean they went through some nobody’s mother’s trashcan?
FINAL POINTS/MY HOPES AND DREAMS:
I don’t think I found anything redeemable about this book. It was the longest, the most boring, the most frustrating one so far. Isabella was my least favourite anaverse heroine but she handed the crown to Scarlett. Same goes for Christian; I can’t believe this book made me like a stalker more than a arrogant footballer. The world must be ending.
I don’t know much about ballet, but I hope it was better researched than all I pointed out so far.
I didn’t take notes as i was reading, but maybe I should. Ana and her team didn’t proofread the book, so I won’t proofread my review.
This book made me wonder if we ever got any token gay/lesbian representation, and I don’t think we have. Would be interesting, maybe Asher and Scarlett can break up, and he finds happiness in Vincent’s arms? That would be messy, and I would defend their relationship.
The only good thing about this is that I had fun ranting about this to my friends. I love you, Sammie, Anna, Nat, and Cillian. 🩷🫶
Do better next time, Ana.
That being said, let’s dissect the Striker.
ASHER:
We have already seen snippets of him in the twisted series, and I was excited because this man had potential… that was completely wasted. The book is like 600 pages long and what do we really know about him? He’s a player (allegedly, not even a little bit in the book though), he’s a footballer, he likes to race cars, has daddy issues, and that’s probably all to him. For a book this long, his character seemed half-dimensional. Does he really grow throughout the book? Barely.
SCARLETT:
She’s a new character in Anaverse, but we quickly learn she’s Asher’s “nemesis”’s sister who did professional ballet but due to a car accident and a nerve injury she’s more of a teacher. In the beginning of the book, Asher tells her in a two second speech “the injury doesn’t define you”, but I have to disagree. All we know about her as a character is an aftermath of the car accident she suffered five years ago or a break up (which is also caused by the car accident.) We do love a I-will-myself-a-victim-in-every-situation heroine! 😍 (I wish I was exaggerating but I am not.)
THE RELATIONSHIP:
Honestly, Asher had better chemistry with Scarlett’s brother Vincent. I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment, but instead we got a very low stakes forbidden romance LOTS of forced proximity childish bullshit. This book would’ve been a 70 pages novella if they acted their age.
He’s the playboy that didn’t fuck around since chapter one and was obsessed with the fmc since chapter two. Boring!
She doesn’t want to act on her feelings (or rather a need to fuck) because she’s still coping from a breakup that happened FIVE YEARS AGO and told herself she would never date a football player, but if I’m being frank the breakup didn’t have anything to do with the sport, so I’m assuming plot armour (LOTS of it).
Sneaking around and lying to everyone (especially the overprotective brother/enemy) also felt flat when Vincent literally went to France like five chapters in.
Unfortunately the further in the book, the worse. What’s a book without conflict, right? But this conflict didn’t make any sense!!! Scarlett, after the car accident, feared more the place she was going to (some dance hall) than the place the car accident actually took place (some crossroad, a vehicle). She would break in hives whenever she thought of the dance hall, and maybe felt slight discomfort in vehicles. But to top it off, somewhere in the middle of the book, Scarlett starts to blow Asher’s racing WAY OUT OF PROPORTION. At first, it’s established he races from time to time to take the edge off after especially stressful matches only to make it seem like he’s an adrenaline junkie and risks his life every second he takes. No, if you want to change the plot, be consequential in your writing, readers aren’t stupid.
This stupid drama actually causes everyone’s favourite thing, namely a third act breakup 😍😍😍. But don’t worry, he has a single heart to heart conversation with his dad and his daddy and adrenaline (?) issues are solved! 🥰 And then he makes a single grand gesture (giving his sports cars away to his teammates) and she forgives him. All good.
SMUT/SPICE/PORN:
Whatever you call it. Ana Huang can write a good sex scene. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t deliver the quality nor quantity. 3.5 spicy scenes are all are mid at best. Usually there’s one scene that is iconic for the book (I still haven’t forgotten about the shoe in King of Sloth), but here it’s none. And Scarlett describes it as the best sex of her life? Or her sex life will be ruined because nothing ever will compare? Laughable. I am utterly disappointed on this front.
SIDE CHARACTERS:
Carina and Brooklyn are terrible friends. What’s up with romance authors thinking that “you better blow him or I will” is the best praise you can give! That’s disrespectful to female friendship and inherently rooted in misogyny. All they talk about is Asher and his relationship with Scarlett. Carina and Brooklyn must really have a fucking terrible lives if they both said another awful line “I live vicariously through you”. Insane statement to say to your friend!
OTHER COMPLAINTS:
Sorry Ana, but if you know nothing about football (soccer), don’t write books about it. Literally, football looks nothing like you described it. I saw in the author’s notes you had people helping you with it, but I don’t think they’re knowledgeable enough to give out expertise because it’s wrong.
Same goes for geography of London/England. People who helped you obviously tried to sabotaged you. While Scarlett is a born Londoner, it looks like more Emily in Paris: London spin-off. People say all the time don’t write books about locations you know nothing about, yet here we are. Yet here we are.
Another thing. British English. The speech is a mess. Once there’s dollars, once there’s pounds. Which one is it? Sprinkling typically British-English words like loo, knickers, arse, wanker, bloody, etc doesn’t make the whole thing British. American speed and overall American mindset was more than evident throughout the entire story.
Grammar. Besides obvious grammar and punctuation errors, the book is filled with metaphors and comparisons that don’t make sense — grammatically nor logically. Where is the editor??? Fire them and get a new one because they’re scamming you for money.
This whole random Pluto is a planet to me rant in the middle of the book? That’s been mentioned a few times? What’s up with that? I’m sensing Ali Hazelwood put you up for this. That was cringe and lame and corny in a very bad way.
Speaking of cringe, lame, and corny things, I thought we already exhausted the topic of dinosaur porn books in King of Pride already. It wasn’t quirky then, and it wasn’t quirky now. (But lowkey, I expected Asher to arrange a meeting with the dino porn author for their anniversary gift. Unfortunately, I got fuckass Isabella. Release me.) I hoped it was mentioned so many times because Velma something and Nate Raynolds (Jacob Elordi of Anaverse) will be the main characters of the King of Lust book.
Do you realise that Disneyland in Shanghai was opened in 2016, and if you wrote that Scarlett was there with her parents before they divorced when she was a child that would mean she was born around 2010. Tough math, I know.
PAPARAZZI. Everything about them was just so wrong and unrealistic. What you mean they stake out in front of Scarlett’s coffee shop (although she never went to one), but they never show up at the pub all the characters frequent every five chapters? What do you mean they were in the hospital when she/he was admitted to but never covered the charity match they played? What do you mean they went through some nobody’s mother’s trashcan?
FINAL POINTS/MY HOPES AND DREAMS:
I don’t think I found anything redeemable about this book. It was the longest, the most boring, the most frustrating one so far. Isabella was my least favourite anaverse heroine but she handed the crown to Scarlett. Same goes for Christian; I can’t believe this book made me like a stalker more than a arrogant footballer. The world must be ending.
I don’t know much about ballet, but I hope it was better researched than all I pointed out so far.
I didn’t take notes as i was reading, but maybe I should. Ana and her team didn’t proofread the book, so I won’t proofread my review.
This book made me wonder if we ever got any token gay/lesbian representation, and I don’t think we have. Would be interesting, maybe Asher and Scarlett can break up, and he finds happiness in Vincent’s arms? That would be messy, and I would defend their relationship.
The only good thing about this is that I had fun ranting about this to my friends. I love you, Sammie, Anna, Nat, and Cillian. 🩷🫶
Do better next time, Ana.
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Oct 23, 2024 12:04PM
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