Hard Luck

Trophy Boyfriends, Book 4

By: Sara Ney

Narrated by: Alexander Cendese, Elizabeth Hart

Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Some girls have all the luck.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those girls. Not when I lost my apartment because my roommate let the lease lapse while I travel for work. Not when my brothers keep finding love and my mother keeps reminding me I'm still single. Not after a one-night stand during my older brother's wedding has me waking up pregnant.

I have to keep it a secret - from him and my family. I sure can't tell my brother his teammate, Mateo Espinoza, is the man with whom I slept. Confident, funny Mateo....

A guy can't catch a break.

Just when I thought I'd found the girl of my dreams, she ghosts me. Worse? Her brother refuses to give me her number, and my calls to her office go straight to voicemail. I thought I was a catch; professional athlete, charming, raised with six sisters - I'm a guy who knows his way to a woman's heart! What reason could she possibly have for avoiding me?

When I finally catch up to True Wallace, I'm going to get the answer.

Contains mature themes.

©2021 Sarah Ney (P)2021 Tantor

LOVE, LOVE LOVE

Very funny book. I enjoyed it. I think they are a perfect match. I also love her brothers.

Fantastic story!!

I didn't want it to end! I blew through all 4 books in this series so quickly! I couldn't stop listening. I absolute loved True and Mateo's story. These narrators were incredible!!

Insta-bought this ❤❤❤ because duh!

Alexander does a Mexican accent 😳🤤
Omg this is too funny! Matteo's sisters kill me! 🤣🤣 This is about the younger sister of books 2 and 3, and omg the brothaers are so adorkable!

Brother’s Teammate Accidental Pregnancy

Mateo and True hook up at her brother’s wedding. Weeks later, she finds out she’s pregnant. After ghosting Mateo and he can’t stop thinking of her, he finally gets her number. After weeks of knowing she’s pregnant, she finally tells Mateo.

Mateo is such a cinnamon roll guy. He seems like a playboy but really he’s a huge family guy.

True, she’s the baby of the family. Having two older brothers as athletes, they’ve been overly protective of her.

Loved this serious. The hilarious banter between siblings and the couples. So good!

Tropes:
Athlete- baseball
Close Family
Accidental pregnancy
One Night Stand

👍

This story was so funny like it’s was everything romance, accidental pregnancy, sports and older brother drama . Utterly perfect

meh ... typical one night stand sex to baby

-sports theme without any sports
-one night stand of hot sex without any hot sex ... in fact there is no lust, no build up and no steamy sex at all
- weird start with her hiding from the baby daddy
-weird ending with announcing the gender at a game without even discussing with her first and then Buzz declaration as an afterthought didn't fit at all

”Twenty-something, single, and preggo!”

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙❤️💜
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🙂🥰☺️😎
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

The heroine: True Wallace - she works for a sports recruiter helping high school athletes to get seen by colleges and get scholarships. Her two brothers Tripp and Buzz are professional athletes. Tripp is a professional football player and Buzz is a professional baseball player. While attending Buzz’s wedding a few months ago, she got to know his teammate Mateo and ended up spending the night with him and ghosting him in the morning.

The Hero: Mateo José Espinoza - he plays second base for the Chicago Steam pro baseball team. He is one of the stars on the team and in his early days he was quite a playboy, but that lifestyle got old a while ago. Lately he has liked forming a connection with a person before sleeping with them and despite the fact that he slept with True on the same day he met her, he already felt a bond with her.

The Story: when True finds out she is pregnant, at the same time as she was evicted from her apartment because her roommate kept forgetting to pay the rent, she is at a loose end. She moves in with her brother Tripp, but is a bit too freaked out to contact Mateo. Before she knows it, she is more than 11 weeks pregnant and still hasn’t told anyone except Tripp and his 15-year-old neighbor, who helps him out by walking his dog Chewy among other things.

This book had a good story, though I tend to like linear storytelling, I wish it would have started out the night of the wedding reception and gone from there. Instead, it starts on the day True moved into her brother's place and as it went on there were frequent flashbacks to the night of the wedding and what went on between Mateo and True. I really dislike flashbacks, though I do see the fact that they can be a good plot device. I just didn’t see the need here.

I liked the characters and there were a ton of supporting characters. Trip and Buzz, and their significant others, were characters from previous books in this same series, so it was nice to see them again. Mateo has six sisters and I just loved them, they were all up in his business and quite hilarious about it. Though it was a bit hard to see Mateo as a big heartthrob type after seeing him as one of the younger siblings in a big boisterous family, and a bit of a mama’s boy to boot.

This book was a hard one, because the first half was pretty boring, but it did get better and better as it went along, especially as True finally tells Mateo and then they start to tell their families. The last hour had me laughing out loud. Tripp and Buzz were hilarious, especially Buzz who is way too involved in his sister’s life.

This audiobook was told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Alexander Cendese and Elizabeth Hart. I do really like Alexander Cendese, he has a great voice and puts a ton of emotion into his narration. Though, he does have a terrible female voice. So would really be better in duet narration. Elizabeth Hart is the opposite. Her male voice isn’t too bad, but her regular voice is so very annoying. I almost quit listening to this book because I had to turn the sound down each time she was narrating and turn it back up when Alexander was.

Such a fun series!!

Love how this family is in each book, just with a new love couple to follow. The brothers are hilarious and so over the top!! You know it’s out of love but oh my, I’d kill them! Haha! True and Mateo are perfect for each other. They both come from over the top families that nothing can scare them away!!! I must admit I was not ready for this book to be over. I wanted more!!!! Not sure if there’s another book in the series but I wanna know more!!!!!

So much fun

My first time reading anything from Sara Ney, but it won't be my last. The story draws you in and makes you want to spend time with these characters. I couldn't stop laughing. Such a fun read!

2.25 stars

2.25 stars
I like this author and I am making my way through her backlist, but I have unfortunately read several books by her lately that do not seem like complete romances. This is another one.
First of all, I didn't like the author's choice to make the main characters so irresponsible. They had sex within hours of meeting and didn't use a condom. No discussion of birth control or STDs. Neither character was presented as reckless and irresponsible in general, so this decision was perplexing. It only served to make them both seem stupid and immature.
Second of all, no good reason was given for the FMC waiting so long to tell the MMC about the pregnancy. He was trying to contact her and she ignored him, which is ridiculously immature and rude. Her reasoning was senseless.
Third of all, there's no development of the romance. The MMC tells the reader in his inner monologue that he loves the FMC but he doesn't tell her yet. The FMC doesn't tell the reader or the MMC that she loves him or is even falling for him. They talk and have sex but it seems more like a friends a benefits situation than a romance. Like, "well, we are having a kid so we might as well have sex and learn to get along." It was just an odd decision for a romance novel.
The book ends with no clear direction for the relationship, with the FMC even telling the reader via inner monologue that she's sleeping in the same bed as the MMC instead of in a guest bedroom as if that's a big deal. Seemed like the book needed to be longer so the reader could see the development from that point to the FMC falling in love to the MMC declaring his love to maybe a proposal and/or wedding.
I'm giving this read 2.25 stars. It's a disappointment because the MMC was actually a really good character. He's sweet, respectful and incredibly supportive. He deserved a better story.