See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson

***Chinooks Hockey Team, #2***

***THIS IS JANE***

A little subdued. A little stubborn. A little tired of going out on blind dates with men who drive vans with sofas in the back, Jane Alcott is living the Single Girl existence in the big city. She is also leading a double life. By day, she's a reporter covering the raucous Seattle Chinooks hockey team—especially their notorious goalie Luc Martineau. By night, she's a writer, secretly creating the scandalous adventures of "Honey Pie"...the magazine series that has all the men talking.

***SEE JANE SPAR***

Luc has made his feelings about parasite reporters—and Jane—perfectly clear. But if he thinks he's going to make her life a misery, he'd better think again.

***SEE JANE ATTRACT***

For as long as he can remember, Luc has been single minded about his career. The last thing he needs is a smart mouthed, pain in the backside, reporter digging into his past and getting in his way. But once the little reporter shed her black and gray clothes in favor of a sexy red dress, Luc sees that there is more to Jane than originally meets the eye.

Maybe it's time to take a risk. Maybe it's time to live out fantasies. Maybe it's time to....

***SEE JANE SCORE!***

I'm glad I kept going with this series even though I didn't finish book 1 because this one was just about perfect!

You see, I have a thing with jocks. So this book is just perfect for me.

Jane, the lead female character is neither pretty nor sexy. She's got an A-cup breast, she wears lesbian glasses (according to Luc and his teammates), she's got no fashion sense and always dresses in drab.

Luc, meanwhile, is THE man most women dream about. He's bad, he's tough, he's smoking hot. But behind that toughness, Luc is just a normal guy with insecurities of his own. He's got that soft spot. Now, this kind of guy, I think us chick-lit lovers is familiar with. But again and again, we have to fall in love with him, no?

Despite their differences, they fall in love. Now, don't we all love that kind of story? Well, I do. And to know that at least there is another not-so-perfect heroine made my day. After all, sometimes in life, Ken didn't always choose Barbie.

I can relate to another goodreads reviewer who said they felt like they set feminism back 100 years by reading and liking this - but I'm not sorry about it? So be forewarned that my reflections might really just be post hoc self-justification. First, the plot includes a female journalist getting a temporary assignment following the Seattle hockey team. I think the locker room talk is likely a highly accurate depiction, but that also means...you end up reading a fair bit of locker room talk! Second, the love interest has a reputation as a womanizer, so there's a lot of “he's just in it for the sex” stuff, which is a boring plotline. The thing that redeems this aspect, but not fully, is that we get enough character development of him to see that a lot of that perception of his current actions (not his past, which sounds very par for the “professional athlete” course sorrrrrry that sports pun just came out of left field oh god I can't stop) is actually misperception on the journalist's part. He is legitimately into her pretty quickly, and she is too caught up in her own crap to realize it. Third, journalist actually pays her bills by writing erotica, and I really like that premise, but Gibson didn't use it as effectively/interestingly as she could have. The journalist ends up having an internal virgin/whore battle going on that just...ugh. She shouldn't be apologetic about that!! Even if she's not advertising it to her colleagues!! Anyway, totally unrelated to sexism, Gibson is funnily obsessed with the glamour of the Space Needle, which is easily not one of the best parts of Seattle. All in all, smart woman gets super hot partner who is really into her, sex scenes are steamy, and this was definitely written in 2003.