Today I am so excited to be part of the Game. Set. Match blog tour. Jennifer Iacopelli’s debut novel is part of the 2013 YA Contemporary Challenge so add it to your TBR if you haven’t already!
Title: Game. Set. Match
Author: Jennifer Iacopelli
Release date: May 1, 2013
Nestled along the North Carolina coast, the Outer Banks Tennis Academy is the world’s most elite training facility. In this pressure-cooker environment, futures are forged in blood and sweat, and dreams are shattered in an instant.
Penny Harrison, a rising female star, is determined to win the French Open and beat her archrival, Zina Lutrova. But when her coach imports British bad boy Alex Russell as her new training partner, will Penny be able to keep her laser-like focus?
Tennis is all Jasmine Randazzo has ever known. The daughter of two Grand Slam champions, she’s hell-bent on extending her family’s legacy and writing her own happily-ever-after…until her chosen Prince Charming gives her the just-friends speech, right before the biggest junior tournament of the year, the Outer Banks Classic.
With a powerful serve and killer forehand, newcomer Indiana Gaffney is turning heads. She’s thrilled by all of the attention, especially from Jack Harrison, Penny’s agent and hot older brother, except he keeps backing off every time things start heating up.
With so much at stake, dreams—and hearts—are bound to break.
Jennifer Iacopelli was born in New York and has no plans to leave…ever. Growing up, she read everything she could get her hands on, but her favorite authors were Laura Ingalls Wilder, L.M. Montgomery and Frances Hodgson Burnett all of whom wrote about kick-ass girls before it was cool for girls to be kick-ass. She got a Bachelor’s degree in Adolescence Education and English Literature quickly followed up by a Master’s in Library Science, which lets her frolic all day with her books and computers, leaving plenty of time in the evenings to write and yell at the Yankees, Giants and her favorite tennis players through the TV.
So I’m team Indy but I love Alex so I had to pick an excerpt with him in it. This is the very first scene with Alex and from this moment on I totally fell for him! And he’s British!
She opened the gate and dropper her bag against the fence before tilting her head in confusion. There was a man sprawled across the court, eyes closed, face to the sun, completely relaxed, except for his hands, which were firing through the air, drumming along with the music she could hear buzzing through his headphones even from the other side of the court.
“Excuse me,” Penny said sharply. “This court is reserved.” The man didn’t move. He was tall and broad, making the large playing surface seem so much smaller than it actually was.
“Excuse me,” she repeated when he didn’t so much as twitch in response, “this court is…” She trailed off as she approached. Frowning down at the court squatter, she immediately recognized him, especially since the last time she’d seen him he’d been in a similar state, totally relaxed, eyes closed — though he’d been wearing much less clothing.
Alex Russell, the best player in the world — or at least he used to be. Three years before, at the age of seventeen, Alex Russell was the first British man to win Wimbledon since 1936 and the youngest man to do it, ever — besting a record set by Boris Becker in 1985 by 211 days. He’d won the career Grand Slam at twenty, and since then, his game had gone to hell. Too much partying and not nearly enough training sent his ranking freefalling from number one in the world down into the mid-twenties, and only that high because of his insane natural talent.
He also held the distinction of being the only thing ever to distract Penny Harrison from tennis.
I really liked sports books even though I’m not into sports myself!
Tennis is an interesting arena for all the feuding and training.
The excerpts rocked.