Sunday, January 20, 2019

Blog Tour: The Athlete and the Aristocrat by Louisa Masters

Sometimes love takes balls.
Genre: M/M Romance
Subgenres: Sports Romance, Office Romance, Billionaire Romance
Stand-alone novel
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: January 1st 2019
Newly retired championship footballer Simon Wood is taking on his next challenge. His plan for a charity to provide funding for underprivileged children to pursue football as a career has passed its first hurdle: he has backers and an executive consultant. Now it’s time to get the ball rolling.

Lucien Morel, heir to the multibillion-euro Morel Corporation, is shocked—and thrilled—to learn his father has volunteered him as consultant to a fledgling football charity. Better yet, the brains behind it all is heartthrob Simon Wood, his teenage idol and crush.

Although Simon and Lucien get off on the wrong foot, it’s not long before they’re getting along like a house on fire—sparks included. But with the charity under public scrutiny, can their romance thrive?
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2L9jhfv
The Athlete and the Aristocrat by Louisa Masters pairs Simon and Lucien together. One is an ex-footballer who is trying to start a charity to help kids, and the other is the consultant for the charity, who is also meeting his longtime celebrity crush. Sounds like the makings of a lot of sparks. Things aren't that easy though.

The book has a great premise and what is described as something that would be a great read, but it fell a little flat for me. The story was enjoyable and had moments where I found myself smiling or experiencing an emotional pull, however, the moments were few and far between. Not only that, it felt like the chemistry was forced in parts. The writing was well done, but there were parts I wished were more flushed out and that the author had done a little more research. Some parts left me shaking my head. 3.5 stars. 
Check out Louisa's The Bunny and the Billionaire also in the Dreamspun Desires collection.
Billionaire businessman Lucien has just discovered he’s going to be working with retired championship soccer player Simon Wood to set up a charity sponsoring underprivileged kids.

Lucien thanked Paul and ended the call, reading through the provided information again and making notes for himself. He pushed down the thrill of excitement that crept through him. This program was the kind of thing he’d always wanted to get started but hadn’t because of time constraints and parental expectations. He’d always been a huge football fan, went to as many matches as he could and watched the rest on TV, but aside from casual matches with friends as a teenager or school sports, he’d never played. His father hadn’t approved, insisting he had other responsibilities.

The last page of Paul’s notes was a profile of Simon Wood, and this time Lucien couldn’t stop the zing that shot through him. Simon Wood, age thirty-four, retired championship footballer. There was a list of his charitable endeavors, and a paragraph about his schooling—apparently the man had found time somewhere in his career to get an MBA—but nowhere had Paul included one very important fact: Simon Wood was hot.

Ridiculously hot.

So hot that he’d consistently made hottest bachelor lists around the world over the last decade.

He was also rumored to be bisexual. There had never been any confirmation, not even a tell-all tabloid story, but the gossip mill murmured that while Simon publicly only had girlfriends, his bed was not restricted to a single gender. When Lucien had been a horny fourteen-year-old struggling to understand his own sexuality, the rumors about then-nineteen-year-old football sensation Simon Wood had grounded him and helped him get his head around exactly why he could be turned on by both Jennifer Lopez and Hugh Jackman.

Not to mention, the man himself had played a starring role in many of Lucien’s teenage fantasies.

Just the sound of his name was sexy… Sigh-mon. And he was so utterly sigh-worthy.

Louisa Masters started reading romance much earlier than her mother thought she should. While other teenagers were sneaking out of the house, Louisa was sneaking romance novels in and working out how to read them without being discovered. She’s spent most of her life feeling sorry for people who don’t read, convinced that books are the solution to every problem. As an adult, she feeds her addiction in every spare second, only occasionally tearing herself away to do things like answer the phone and pay bills. She spent years trying to build a “sensible” career, working in bookstores, recruitment, resource management, administration, and as a travel agent, before finally conceding defeat and devoting herself to the world of romance novels.

Louisa has a long list of places first discovered in books that she wants to visit, and every so often she overcomes her loathing of jet lag and takes a trip that charges her imagination. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she whines about the weather for most of the year while secretly admitting she’ll probably never move.
Check out Louisa's giveaway HERE.
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