I would have liked Hendricks to explore the relationship between Jason and his father more. I think that reveal could have come earlier and with a lot more tension and repercussions. When he finally tells Jason the full story, it felt rushed and out of place. He’s also once again secretly dating another teammate, which in the past led to him being severely injured. His past experience has left him with fear of being hurt again. Derek is playing football again, a sport which almost left him paralyzed. There was a lot of material that could have been worked with there.

I would have liked to have seen more development of both MCs.

Having a newly minted Division 1 team lose to Alabama is keeping it real, and, as a lifelong, diehard Bama fan, I appreciate that Alison Hendricks did not ruin the story by turning it into a complete suspension of reality. Whenever I read a book involving a fictional team that manages to beat my Alabama Crimson Tide, that’s when the book moves from fiction to fantasy, and I don’t read fantasy.

And I love it when a story’s first person POV switches from one main character to the other because as I reader I like to know what both characters are thinking and/or feeling.

I like first person point of view because I think it allows a reader to have more insight into the character, which leads to more empathy and understanding. And Jason was so ultra-focused as a quarterback while his academic career was crumbling to dust and his father was pushing him too hard and too far without ever stopping to ask if football was what Jason really wanted. The terrible experience he had playing football in high school would have caused anyone to quit for good, but there he was, back on the grid iron, giving it the old college try, literally. I got what I expected, which is to say that I expected an average but not stellar story that was okay, but could have used more development. I am a sucker for an M/M story that involves American football players, so naturally Strong Side (Eastshore Tigers #1) was a must-read for me, and it did not disappoint.

Strong Side by Alison Hendricks