Blake and Alex meet in high school, Alex is at his last year while instead Blake is an year younger. Both of them play football, but not for the same team, they are in different high school. They are also from a different family environment, Alex from a single parent family, his dad the only one to maintain 3 sons to college, while instead Blake is from a tight family, father and mother working together to raise two sons towards a brilliant future. Alex is guarded, not easy to trust, and instead Blake is open and friendly. Apparently Blake is the easy one, the unselfish, the one who will always be supportive to Alex and his dreams. Blake is also the one who makes to first move, and easy like that, they move from having just met to being boyfriends. They don’t have a “coming out”, they don’t flaunt their love like a rainbow flag in the wind, but their family know and accept, not without worries but still with love for their children, their tighter friends are supportive and even from the schools they are able to find acceptance and good advices. Problem is that one of these advices is for Alex to not be out in college if he wants to play football and have a scholarship, and that is the starting point of their trouble.
First Alex has to move far from Blake to go to college, second they are not able to be together even if long distance and last but not least, Blake is a little bit jealous of Alex’s scholarship for football, when Blake will not be able to have it. Blake being jealous instead of making him bad to my eyes, had him nicer. Blake is more real like that, he is not the perfect next door boy; Blake has really no reason to be upset for not having a full scholarship, his parents can afford to send him to college wherever he likes, and plus being his father a college professor, he can even attend his home college for free. But like a teenager with a passion for sports, Blake cannot let it go without having bad feelings that his boyfriend managed something he was not able to.
On the other side, Alex is totally unprepared to be in a relationship; if he can do something wrong, you can be sure he will do it. He is not able to read the messages Blake is sending him, he is not able to reassure him, and he always, always let them be separate each other with bad words and harsh feelings. I don’t think Alex is egoistic, I think he is simply a young adult who has still a lot to learn.
In the end, Fair Catch was a little more sexy then expected (I would say more the upper side of teenagers if you are targeting YA readers) and also more sweet, it was really a romance, with young hearts in love.
http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=83&products_id=3595
Amazon: Fair Catch
Amazon Kindle: Fair Catch
Paperback: 396 pages
Publisher: Prizm (June 13, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1610403304
ISBN-13: 978-1610403306
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott