R E V I E W ➠ Hands Down by Mariana Zapata




Before he was Big Texas, he was Zac the Snack Pack.
Bianca Brannen knows time—mostly—heals all wounds. Including those your once loved ones might have unintentionally given you. (Those just take longer.)
She thinks she’s ready when a call has her walking back into her old friend’s life. Or at least as prepared as possible to see the starting quarterback in the National Football Organization. Before the lights, the fans, and the millions, he’d been a skinny kid with a heart of gold.
Waltzing out of Zac Travis’s life should be easy. Just as easy as he walked out of hers.

RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2020

I loved him, and I knew it. I really did. And I had no fucking business doing so.

-Bianca

Not my first read by the author i first fell in love with and i mean re fell in love with her Winnipeg book sooo hard. So i was used to get slow burns, since I’ve read a lot of her other books as well so this will be with a heavy hard to write this review. But i am always honest with my reviews, as i also am a emotional reader. Since i don’t do spoilers and i rather not get into them I’ll try to explain best of my feelings for this book. 

The heroine is a quirky adorable woman who works two jobs, one she hates one she loves. The hero is a quarterback in the NFL and has been all his life. these two have known each other since in diapers, nothing too tragic on their child hoods while some with the heroine. They end up not taking or seeing each other for 10 years due to reasons and when a chance presents itself for the heroine to have to see the hero, she is even more heartbroken when he doesn’t remember her. see the heroines cousin who plays a big part is bffs to the hero, all their life from day one and still. That said i really don’t want to get into too much of the store, there is a lot of it. But I’d love to express my feelings for the following:
1. I felt very disconnected to the hero the entire time until the very end. yes its her pov only but i longer for that connection with him
2. dare i say this,  but even THIS was too platonic for me. i felt no romance in any sense but at the end.  heck i thought she’d be better off with Santiago. here is why: the hero calls her kiddo THE ENTIRE BOOK and i his be honest but a few times i get but it threw me off every single time even in the end,  also doesn’t help that he patted her shoulder or head like a little sister type, it just threw me off soooo hard. 
3. when you have a VERY slow burn, to me you risk the whole story being mostly forgotten once you reach the peek, in this case at the very end. I will say this,  not a spoiler but only 1 sex scene in this (nothing wrong with it just letting you know). The first kiss was super cute though. I enjoyed the peek and epilogue but here is my problem, when you get that portion in so little i always want, no need more. again, might be a lot of people’s likes but, unfortunately for me… this was a painful slow. All that said, i want to praise the hell out of Mariana for her words, story line and characters, no matter what is what i fell in love with with reading her first book. I’m sorry this one ended up not being one for me but I’m sure they’re will be plenty more for me to try.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Romance: ♡♡♡
Steamy: 🔥
Triggers: NA
Standalone/Series: Standalone
Type: All Tags on top of this page!