Review: The Perfect Date by Evelyn Lozada

One Star

I was a little dubious going into this book. The cover is adorable and the synopsis makes the book sound so good. But I read a few reviews before starting and to say they were mixed would be generous. Still, I received this book in exchange for a fair review, so I was prepared to be open minded. Then I saw that the author quoted herself in the acknowledgments… I’ve read thousands of books, and that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that, so I braced myself from there.

THE PERFECT DATE follows Angel, a hard-working single mom attempting to keep her head above water and finish nursing school and Caleb “The Duke” Lewis, a professional baseball player. They meet in a community clinic where Angel is bringing her son for an emergency breathing treatment; Duke is there getting his ankle looked at. Yes, the professional baseball player, worth millions of dollars, decides to bribe a community clinic doctor with $1500 to wrap his ankle instead of going to a private athletic trainer or therapist. Umm. What?

The whole book pretty much unravels from there. Besides the ridiculous and poorly researched baseball facts, the writing was clunky, the scene switches were abrupt, and both main characters were unlikable in the extreme. To make matters worse, I’ve never read a more inconsistently characterize heroine than Angel. One minute she’s so angry and full of fire, then we switch to Duke’s POV and she’s all fresh-faced innocence and “not like other girls.” Spare me.

I gave up on this book at 42% when we meet the other baseball girlfriends and wives whose vapid and shallow conversations made it impossible to continue torturing myself. I could feel the drama ramping up (baseball drama, fake dating drama, money drama, doctor drama) and I just wasn’t invested enough to put myself through all of that extra drama in a very, very short book. Plus Duke has basically been a self-serving jerk the whole story and set Angel up for humiliation (ignorance does not excuse him) at the party.

Overall, I am incredibly disappointed. I was really hoping to make it to at least 50%, and maybe if the writing had been better, I would have been able to overcome my distaste, but it wasn’t. Moving on with my life! Hopefully, this book connects with someone else, it just didn’t with me.

**I received an ARC of this book in order to provide an honest review**