It Had to Be You
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3.8 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Windy City isn't quite ready for Phoebe Somerville—the outrageous, curvaceous New York knockout who has just inherited the Chicago Stars football team. And Phoebe is definitely not ready for the Stars' head coach, former gridiron legend Dan Calebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind. Calebow is everything Phoebe abhors. And the sexy new boss is everything Dan despises—a meddling bimbo who doesn't know a pigskin from a pitcher's mound.
So why is Dan drawn to the shameless sexpot like a heat-seeking missile? And why does the coach's good ol' boy charm leave cosmopolitan Phoebe feeling awkward, tongue-tied . . . and ready to fight?
The sexy, heartwarming, and hilarious "prequel" to This Heart of Mine—Susan Elizabeth Phillips's New York Times bestselling blockbuster—It Had To Be You is an enchanting story of two stubborn people who believe in playing for keeps.
Customer Reviews
I’ll be nice and call it dated
I feel like the first thing that needs to be said about this book is that it is dated. Horribly dated. Most notably in the plot point that hinges on what a great and fun loving guy Donald Trump is, though the casual mentions of OJ Simpson (which, considering the book was published in 1994, probably dated the book almost immediately), and the heroine’s devotion to the 90s Versace aesthetic (is the Liz Hurley dress an inspiration for one of the heroine’s outfits? I think so) also help. More importantly, the heroine is a victim of sexual violence, and the way it is discussed is very 90s and can feel deeply insensitive from a modern perspective. Basically any mention of the heroine's sexual agency, wardrobe, or sexual trauma will be a major cringe at best.
The way the male characters discuss women can also be pretty gross; I mean, I get that the NFL is no bastion of feminism, but come on, it's Chicago in the 90s not Hicksville in the 30s. There's also the heroine's gay best friend, who exists mostly to be vaguely misogynist and flirt with the hero (so that we know he's a ginormous misogynist but not a homophobe, so he's fine) before disappearing from the story without an explanation.
The plot is fine, up until the end, where there are, for some totally inexplicable reason, two villains whose motives and psychology are fairly lazily explored rather than one villain with a strong background. The author literally went to the effort of creating a second villain partway through the book to the sole effect of making the story weaker.
I don't know. It's not great.