Racing Hearts by Laura Lascarso Series: Racing Hearts #1
Published by Leap Books on 2/10/15
Pages: 97
Source: Blog Tour
My content rating: YA (Nothing more than kissing)
My rating:
Start your engines…
Eighteen-year-old Jesse Copeland learns of a local car race sponsored by his father's nemesis, Shep Bradley, and the prize money might be enough to keep his family from losing their home—if he can win.
Brooke, Shep’s daughter, is also aiming to compete, with or without her father’s approval. She’ll do whatever it takes to persuade Jesse to make her car race ready. Both are driven, both are risk-takers, and soon it’s more than engines getting fired up. Jesse tells himself their relationship is strictly business, until it isn’t.
Can two star-crossed lovers overcome a family feud as old as Ford vs. Chevy, or will the competition become too explosive for these racing hearts?
Racing Hearts is a great start to a series of novellas that feature romance and race car driving. I haven’t read very many serial novellas, so this was a bit new for me, but I enjoyed getting to know the characters for this series and I’m eager to read more!
What I enjoyed:
- Jesse. Jesse is one of those characters who is just instantly likable. He’s working hard to take care of his family after his father’s death – and he’s given up most of his own freedom to do so. He’s also given up on his dream of becoming a race car driver ever since his father and biggest supporter has been gone. I’m eager to see him find his love of racing again.
- Starcrossed lovers. Jesse and Brooke are a bit of an unlikely pair. Their fathers were friends turned arch-rivals, and they had some very bad blood between them at some point in the past. Because of this, nobody is really behind Brooke and Jesse as a couple. To make things more complicated, these two may end up being competitors in a race that Jesse needs to win for his family. I’m always a sucker for these types of relationships, so I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
- Family secrets. The best thing about this novella was the multitude of family secrets that start to get revealed as the book progresses. Of course, since this is just the first installment in a series of novellas, we don’t get many answers as to what actually happened between Jesse and Brooke’s fathers (and the rest of their family members too), but we start to get some very tantalizing hints. I’m eager to find out the details of what actually went down that caused so much animosity between these two families.
The negatives:
- Slight lack of connection to the romance. The only problem with a novella like this is that there just isn’t as much time to develop the characters and get me completely invested in the romance. I’m still not completely sure that Brooke isn’t kind of using Jesse, but we shall see. Of course, that’s kind of the way that these serial novellas go – in a regular book, you get to see the characters grow throughout the book. In this type of series, you see more of that development as the series go on, I think. I have to kind of reserve judgement on this until I read more of the series.
This seems like a great start to the story – lots of mysteries are presented, and suspense is built. I’m eager to see where Lascarso goes with these characters and this story! I give this book 4/5 stars.
***Disclosure: I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was given and all opinions are my own.***
Laura Lascarso’s Top Ten Addictions
10. Music
9. Twitter
8. Sleep
7. Soccer
6. Photography
5. the Beach
4. Coffee
3. Reading
2. Writing
1. Family
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laura Lascarso strives to craft stories that are honest and real with characters who must overcome great odds. Her debut novel Counting Backwards (Atheneum 2012) won the Florida Book Award gold medal for YA literature. RACING HEARTS is Laura’s first e-series with Leap Books. She lives in North Florida with her darling husband, two children and a menagerie of animals.
Watch for Laura’s series with Shine which follows a pair of star-crossed lovers. He wants to honor his father’s legacy; she wants to prove her father wrong in this modern-day Romeo & Juliet set in the world of competitive car racing.
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17 responses to “Review, Giveaway & Author Top Ten List – Racing Hearts by Laura Lascarso”
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I used to be a fan of book set in a racing world, but it’s been such a long time. While this sound enjoyable enough, I’m wary that the length of the novel might be a problem for me.
Yes, I wasn’t so sure about reading a serial. You need to go into it knowing that you’re not going to get the full story – or even the full development of the characters. Some people might prefer to just wait for all of the serials to be out and then read them all at once. Definitely keep your eye out for this one, though!
This sounds like an adorable read! I love these type of reads, especially in spring. 🙂
Yeah, it’s kind of a fun, light, quick read that hooks you with the family mysteries!
This cover is the exact same as Forget Me by Jennifer Echols. Interesting. Romeo and Juliet like?
Ah, yes – that happens sometimes with self-pubbed books – they share covers. It’s not my favorite thing, but I guess it can’t be avoided. The Romeo and Juliet element is because of the feud between the two families. 🙂
Oh, now I feel embarrassed. Story sounds neat!
No reason to be embarrassed! It was just an observation. 🙂
I’m such a sucker for romance books that involve racing.
Me too!
Ohh, I thought this book might be NA from the cover – it does sound interesting though. You have me intrigued now – fab review Nicole 🙂
I think one of the characters is still in high school and the other has graduated relatively recently – but there was no content that made it NA, so I was calling it YA.
[…] Stop 6: Laura gives a Top 10 List and there’s a review of her book at Feed Your Fiction Addiction! […]
I’m not a fan of the cover, but when I actually read what the story is about it sounds like I might like it after all. I just love reading about starcrossed lovers!
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