Book Review: The Long Game by Elena Armas

📝 What is The Long Game about?:

Adalyn Reyes has her life perfectly planned: work hard at Miami Flames FC, go home, repeat. When a viral video of her altercation with the team’s mascot disrupts her routine, her father, the team’s owner, sends her to rural North Carolina to redeem herself by turning around the struggling Green Warriors, a children’s soccer team. Faced with players in tutus, pet goats, and a mysterious yet uncooperative goalkeeping prodigy, Adalyn is determined to prove herself, no matter how challenging or chaotic the journey becomes.

📚 Genre: ROMANCE

🎧 Format: E-bOOK

💞 Feels: ⭐⭐⭐.5

[Note: I read the books out of order, so there will be some commentary on The Fiancé Dilemma sprinkled in. I couldn’t separate the two books after reading them so closely together.]

Initial thoughts I had after starting The Long Game was about why this book is dual POV and The Fiancé Dilemma was mostly single POV. Something is definitely missing from only getting Josie’s side of the story in The Fiancé Dilemma. Getting Adalyn and Cameron’s viewpoints made this book have an edge over The Fiancé Dilemma. Writing that last sentence feels very ironic, after all the times I’ve complained about multiple perspectives – but when an author excels at multiple POVs, why do something else?

In both books the dad is a thorn in my side. I wish there’d been some other motivation to bring Adalyn to this town – or rather, I wish they just didn’t have to have the same dad. He sucks; so why do I have to have him taking up pages in two books?! I thought his non-presence in The Fiancé Dilemma was cringe; he of course is even more annoying in The Long Game because I’ve gone backwards in time.

His big secret was anti-climactic. I’m not a big fan of secret siblings in interconnected romance novels. Abby Jimenez has also done this in her books, I hate it. Now had I read the books in the correct order maybe I would’ve been gleefully shocked; but since I didn’t I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop throughout the book. Then it happens and I’m like, that’s it?! Pitiful.

The good stuff

Okay, I’ve wasted enough time talking about the bad dad. Moving on to the good stuff – the slow burn romance. Now I thought Josie and Matthew were moving kind of slow in The Fiancé Dilemma; Adalyn and Cameron took the cake! They moved at a glacial pace – it was so cute. I definitely like enemies-to-lovers over fake relationships; ’cause banter and snark always makes me laugh out loud. Cameron fell first, the way I like it, and was verbalizing his interest. Adalyn was maddeningly not paying attention to his compliments. Frustrating. Unobservant, type A main characters are oxymorons.

Getting chapters from Cameron’s perspective were chef’s kiss. Definitely not enough chapters from his side of things. I liked hearing more about why he’s hiding in this town. He and Adalyn are both trying to recuperate for different, but similar professional hurdles. I like that in essence they seem like opposites but in the end they are very similar. Their chemistry was nice to see develop over the story.

Getting technical

After already reading the next book I do think characters are different, but it doesn’t seem like a natural character development. Like Josie seems to have regressed in her own book, but maybe because she wasn’t the focus in The Long Game she seems perfect and untroubled to Adalyn. I think the small view we get of Cameron and Adalyn in The Fiancé Dilemma seems natural in the changes that they’ve gone through. Cam is still entirely too over protective and snarky; Adalyn is more fragile – which I’m guessing that’s from being with Cam and meeting her sister she’s letting herself be more vulnerable.

Josie just seems too much like a “manic pixie dream girl” in this book. She’s doing everything; she’s everything to everybody; she’s an energizer bunny. And that identity totally falls apart in The Fiancé Dilemma. The more I talk about her the more I convince myself maybe the character development of Josie was natural. She went from being picture perfect in The Long Game to a basket case in The Fiancé Dilemma. And I can’t even analyze Matthew’s character development, he’s very surface level in both books.

Final thoughts

I think I would’ve liked this book more if I hadn’t read The Fiancé Dilemma first. I couldn’t help but compare and contrast the two books while I read The Long Game. The personalities were more appealing in The Long Game, well not the dad, he sucked in both books. I couldn’t understand him in either books – he felt tacked on and like an attempt to add more depth to the book. Or rather an attempt to have the heroines resolve or at least acknowledge what their issues are, which is connected with their relationship or lack of a relationship with their father.

Dad third act confrontation came too late for me. It didn’t feel thought out, but like something that we just needed to get through. Like we’ve been building to this confrontation very slowly and subtly throughout the book, but when it’s time for the climax it feels rushed and clashes with the romantic relationship. And since it was conflicting with the romantic declarations it was just frustrating. I guess this book technically doesn’t have a third act breakup, which I appreciate, it was like a soft breakup (but really a disagreement).

Redeeming quality was the little cliffhanger at the end with Josie and Matthew’s banter. Unfortunately, their book didn’t rise to the cuteness that The Long Game’s ending promised.

You’ll like this book, if…

You’ll like this book, if you’re a fan of enemies-to-lovers romances with a meet-cute, type A lead and forced proximity.

✅ Spinoff novella nomination:

Can Robbie get a little romance?

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments.

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