Lau ♡'s Reviews > The Right Move

Have you ever read a book you were supposed to love yet end up having to force yourself to finish?


Indy is a girl with simple dreams: create a family to love and live happily ever after. His boyfriend had other plans-plans that involved another girl and a bed. Heartbroken and without a place to stay, Indy finds herself sharing a flat with her best friend’s brother, Ryan Shay, who seems to be counting down the days to be alone again. Why is it so difficult to find people to share her love with?


Ryan Shay has learned the hard way that being a basketball superstar comes with a lot of sacrifices. Everyone wants something from him, so every new person he meets is a potential farce. No one-night stands, no friends, no partying and definitely not flatmates. But his twin sister is his achilles heel, so he ends up being set with the messiest, kindest girl. He only needs a glance to understand Indy is about to put his well-thought plans outside down.


Before I get in deep about why I think this didn’t work for me, I have something to say: I love heroes like Ryan. He’s the reason why it pains me that I couldn’t get into the book, no matter how hard I tried. He’s the reason why I kept reading even if I was feeling nothing. We need more heroes like him in romance. i can’t believe i’m saying this but heroes are not everything.


First, let me introduce you to the characters. Indy is the kind of person full of love, she loves taking care of people even when they don’t deserve it. Her whole life broke when she discovered that her childhood best friend and sweetheart, the person she always thought was going to give her a ring and fill their house with kids, was nothing but a cheater. Here we have the first problem. I didn’t have a single bad thought about Indy, but I also couldn’t relate with her at all. It’s not that I don’t want a soulmate and a family, but that’s not all I want in life. Indy was extremely passive, letting people who didn’t care about her taking advantage of her and unable to say ‘no’ and move on. Again, I respect her but I wasn’t exactly interested in reading about her.


Basketball aside, Ryan Shay’s wildest dreams align with Indy’s, but he is determined to leave the dating for when he retires, when meeting a girl who loves him for who he is will be safer. Everything in his life is well-planed, controlled and very lonely. I understood Ryan. Trusting people is difficult enough for average people like me, I would also disappear from the face of the earth if I were him.


I also understand why his twin thought having Indy in his life will be good for him, but Ryan has trust-issues and almost forcing him to share the only place he felt safe in with a complete stranger rubbed me the wrong way. But I understand forced proximity, so I went along with it-until the second trope came in.


Fake dating is a hard trope to execute realistically, so it was no surprise when I reached page 50 and realized it was not going to work for me this time. Let me narrate the scene for you. We have Ryan’s boss telling him that a partner will be good for his image, while Indy is in the room. Without missing a beat, Ryan tells him he’s actually dating her. Problem solved, right? Only that I could never see someone like Ryan, who cherishes his privacy, who loves to control every single moment of his life, making a decision like that without asking Indy first. Just go home and ask her, that was all I needed. I know this is a romance and that they will end up being happily ever after and that Indy doesn’t care because she’s into Ryan. But I wanted to feel like I was reading a real love story, and I couldn’t. I feel like a broken record, but a lot of MF romances that are getting popular now are too full of tropes to feel real. And I get some people don’t care, but it gets me out of the story every time I find a character I thought I knew doing something that feels out of place only to fit yet another trope. I should have dnfed the book right there, but I was loving it until that part so I decided to keep going.


It didn’t get better. I felt so detached from the story that I found myself skipping even the smut. I could rant about everything that got on my nerves but I think the main problem was that I wasn’t vibing with the writing, so the moment it stopped being fun, I wasn’t able to care again.


Before I finish, I want to say I appreciated the author adding the infertility rep. That’s a problem a lot of couples have and is barely addressed in romance.


Overall, you’ll probably enjoy The Right Move a lot more than me if you don’t care about some unrealistic adjustments made to the plot/characters in order to fit the tropes.