I picked this one up at the thrift store when I traveled to visit my son and his family. I like to check out thrift and Goodwill stores when I go places to pick up books for my Little Free Library. A lot of times, I don’t read the ones I buy but this one drew me on with the promise of being fun.

And it definitely was a fun read. The protagonist is a perfectionist who loses her job basically through sabotage but, as a reader, you get a feeling of relief that she’s getting off the treadmill that was her life working out of town all week and spending weekends at home. Her family life clearly suffered due to her lifestyle/work absences.

The reader gets to see great character arcs of several of the members of her family.

The daughter is a soccer player and most of the book revolves around her quest to play for an elite travel team. The best parts of the story are where the obsessive coach of the elite team sends crazy, ridiculous memos to the girls and their families every day. He’s loony tunes and never met an exclamation mark he didn’t like.

I spent a lot of the story laughing at his memos and hoping he’d get his comeuppance.

I’m a huge soccer nut so this book was right up my alley. The character growth was well done on the characters who had a chance to change. Not so much on the coach guy, but that was sort of expected. Lol

This book was published in 2008 but it could have come out last week as it was so up to date—other than the reference to the Larry King show.

This was a quick read—less than a day—but full of good, entertaining writing as well as a great message about life’s priorities.