Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: The Score
SERIES: Charleston Condors, Book 3
AUTHOR: Beth Bolden
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 373 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 25, 2023
BLURB:
Carter Maxwell knows he’s a screwup. Four teams in three seasons tells the story, as much as he wishes it didn’t.
But finally, he’s landed in a good place, where he likes the team and the team actually likes him. Even the Condors’ current rebuilding mode suits him. There’s a new owner. New coach. New players. New rules.
But one rule hasn’t changed: don’t seduce your agent-appointed c*ckblocker.
Ian Parker agrees to live with Carter and keep him on the straight and narrow for one simple reason: Alec, the agent in charge of cleaning up Carter’s reputation, has promised him something Ian wants very, very badly.
Even more badly than Carter naked above him and below him and next to him.
A chance for Ian to become an agent.
But Ian didn’t take into account just how persuasive Carter is—or just how desperately he desires to be persuaded. Or how, while spending time with Carter, they’ll somehow stumble into a fake relationship that begins to feel all too real.
It doesn’t matter that Carter’s never fallen in love or that he’s never been in a real relationship. It doesn’t matter that Ian’s risking his future as an agent.
He’s determined to score the impossible and reform the bad boy—only after encouraging Carter to misbehave one last time. But this time, only with him.
REVIEW:
Beth Bolden continues her Charleston Condors series with The Score, featuring Carter Maxwell, the team’s uber-talented receiver and NFL’s unofficially dubbed bad boy. Carter’s renowned for being out of control and completely unmanageable, hence his record number of trades in just the first few years of his career. You should read the previous books in this series first in order to fully understand the necessary context for Carter’s mercurial personality and rage-fueled tantrums. A happy-go-lucky party boy one minute and furious football player the next, Carter’s promiscuous ways are well-known. What they don’t know is that Carter does it as a coping mechanism. Sex addiction as anger management. Not a healthy way to live, and its destructive impact on his promising career is quite evident. Carter finally recognizes he needs help and wants to take control of himself and his life, and help he gets in the form of one Ian Parker, the up-and-coming protege of superstar sports agent Alec Mitchell (see The Red Zone from Bolden’s The Riptide series for Alec’s backstory).
Similar to the bodyguard trope albeit without the danger, Ian is Carter’s “minder”; he is tasked with sticking to him like glue and keeping him in line. Crackling chemistry arises at first sight, so the UST is off the charts as they circle each other for the first half of the story. It’s not a question of if they’ll give in to their attraction, but when.
Bolden picks an inspired title with The Score. Its triple entendre hits the three main facets of Carter’s story: 1) Carter lives to score on the field. He’s a fantastic player with an ego. He can get the job done and needs to show people he’s the guy that will score. 2) Carter loves to score off the field, indiscriminately hooking up with nameless people to quench his thirst and quell the fire of anger burning inside him. 3) Carter needs to know the score with Ian – Can they be together? Does he deserve it? Can he make it last? Can he get better, do better, trust himself, and be happy?
The Score charts Carter’s personal journey in relation to these three points, and we see huge character growth over the course of the story. His relationship with Ian is sweet and they work well together, but their romance isn’t the focal point. It’s Carter. Always Carter. Almost exclusively Carter. The book lacks much of the on-field game activity that Bolden typically includes in her sports romances. Bolden is so good at giving all of the details and football analysis of plays and the dynamics of the players, it’s a draw to her stories. But instead, The Score leans heavily on introspection and psychoanalysis, while (sadly) light on action. The story is also missing a tangible conflict, which robs the storyline of dynamics. The pacing is slow and the book is lengthy, clocking in at almost 400 pages, so my attention started to drift at times. Bolden could have shortened the book significantly and still delivered her intended story, but with greater impact.
Overall, The Score is a good book, if a bit flat, with a feel and tone unique to the series thus far. If you’ve been keeping up with the stories in this fictional universe which spans multiple series, you will want to read The Score. It’s not riveting, but it is enjoyable and worth your time, espcially if you are invested in the characters inhabiting this world.
RATING: 
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