Jennifer Prokop is here with another guest review of a highly anticipated new contemporary romance. If you want to see Jennifer’s other guest reviews, you can see them all here!
Jennifer has been reading romance ever since she found a bag of remaindered paperbacks in her grandmother’s basement when she was a teenager. She writes romance reviews for The Book Queen and you can find her on Twitter @JenReadsRomance. She’s also created a website to help readers find romances based on genres and tropes!
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Intercepted is the story of Marlee Harper, long time girlfriend of professional football player Chris Alexander. They’ve been dating since high school and Chris plays for their hometown team, the Denver Mustangs. Ten years into their relationship, they live together but aren’t engaged. It’s an interesting set up, because Chris is not the hero of the story. However, as is often the case in a M/F romance, the guy she’s with in the beginning turns out to be an unrepentant, no-good jerk. More on that later, because the real star of this book isn’t the romance, it’s Marlee herself: and how you feel about that statement will determine whether or not this is the book for you.
By far, the most stunning achievement in this book is the first person “voice” of Marlee. I don’t just mean she’s telling the story, it’s that Alexa Martin’s has created an entirely distinctive worldview which saturates every page in the book. Marlee uses sharp, sarcastic humor (there’s a lot of ironic hashtagging, which #WorkedForMeButMightNotForYou) to create the armor she shows to the world, but we also see the ways she’s struggling. She has a masters in marketing but can’t find a job, the other football wives look down on her for not having a ring on her finger, and she’s clearly not happy in her relationship with Chris. I was completely swept up into Marlee’s world.
Here’s Marlee on a Sunday game day: “I may not follow football closely, but when it comes to going to a game, I can rival the most devout fan with my intensity. What can I say? As soon as they scan my ticket and I step through the turnstile, I transform into an obnoxious, psychotic football soldier. Except instead of camouflage, my uniform consists of impractical heels, skinny jeans, and a football jersey that has been cut, sewed, glued, and covered in Swarovski crystals. But don’t let the bling fool you–I know how to make the sun hit it at the right angle to blind the toughest of opponents.” Marlee is ALL IN no matter what she’s doing, which was fun to read.
This deep dive into Marlee’s point of view isn’t just a technical achievement; it feels brave. Alexa Martin isn’t afraid to include Marlee’s negative, spiteful, or mean feelings. For me, this was refreshing. I’m not always 100% nice in my own thoughts, and I appreciated seeing all those parts of Marlee. Most of her negative feelings center around the group of football wives that plan charity events and other functions. These women are not nice to Marlee and she doesn’t like them, either. At first, it made me uncomfortable because these women were, in many ways, just stereotypical mean girls: thin, blonde, and vicious. Many of the most powerful football wives are white women while Marlee is biracial, and there’s no mistaking the undertone to their bullying. Marlee uses whatever tools she can to defend herself, which are mostly spite and snark. Being competent is the best revenge, for it’s Marlee’s marketing skills that make their charity event such a success, though of course they don’t give her any credit. I teetered back and forth on this, but it’s a very clear demonstration of how black women are expected to defer to those in power positions in order to keep the peace.
Unfortunately, that first person narration that works so well to develop Marlee fails to create compelling characterization for both Chris and the hero, Gavin Pope.
A few years earlier when she and Chris were on a break, Marlee had a one night stand with Gavin. He was always the one that got away, and now he’s back and interested in rekindling an affair. However, Gavin isn’t a fully formed character. I can vividly describe Marlee’s personality and quirks, but Gavin is a never more than a cipher: he likes football, he’s protective, he misses his family, and he fondly remembers their one night stand four years earlier. The only way I can think to describe it is this: I know how Marlee feels ABOUT him, but I didn’t know HIM. It’s painfully thin characterization for a hero, and the result is a lackluster romance.
By the halfway mark, she and Gavin are together, and that’s where the book starts to flounder. It’s tricky to maintain tension and momentum once the romance ends and the relationship begins. Marlee and Gavin face a series of small conflicts, but they’re more like vignettes. Over and over again, a chapter opens, a problem presents itself, and then the problem is solved, often without any intervention on Marlee’s part.
Here’s a spoilery but not major example that illustrates the problem.
It struck me that the Emerson problem is very much the same as the Chris problem.
Marlee seems to lack a fundamental sense of curiosity about herself and the people around her. Emerson has apologized, so why think too hard about it? Marlee also admits that Chris cheated early in their relationship and she was convinced they’d moved past it, but she also says that he is a “professional fucking gaslighter.” She tells Gavin, “And stupid me had noooooo idea. Well, maybe I knew, but pretended not to.” Marlee believed Chris’s lies, but we’re left wondering why ignored her own instincts for ten years. Marlee never seems truly in control of her own life she just reacts. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know if that’s who she is as a character, or a problem amplified by first person present narration. It’s a frustrating double-edged sword; we experience her crushing defeats and dazzling triumphs in real time, but there aren’t any quiet moments where Marlee contemplates her choices. She doesn’t think about what went wrong with Chris or what she hopes will happen with Gavin. This leads to a late stage crisis with Gavin’s career that was hard to believe. It was manufactured drama, but at least Marlee finally reckons with her choices in the past and takes stock of what she wants in her future.
Intercepted does a lot of things right and Alexa Martin has a terrific amount of raw talent. Marlee’s voice is so fresh, but I couldn’t help but wish that the pacing and plotting were as tight as the narration. It’s a debut novel with a stellar first half, but there’s a better book in here, and I wonder why it didn’t emerge. I was rooting for Marlee and was invested in her story; maybe it took a lot more faith than I was used to giving, but it was easy to give a character as likable as Marlee as many chances as she needed to get it right. However, as a romance, it was disappointing. Marlee’s strong voice wasn’t enough to overcome the uneven pacing, the fuzziness of Gavin’s character, and the number of plotting shortcuts.
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Thanks!
I really loved this book, especially the humor. I found myself laughing out loud in public on more than one occasion.
For me the whole women tearing each other down trope is disheartening and Marlee deals with a lot of that, but I also acknowledge she’s in a very unique environment where the motives of those close to rich/famous players might be questioned.
Thanks for the review. I have to say the lack of depth about other charactersis oneof the major detractors for me with the first person POV. This one wasn’t really on my radar, but my interest was peaked when I saw that it was a football book. You would think the necklace would have tipped me off. I may let this one pass.
The POV in Intercepted is so interesting. Jen is spot-on that Marlee is an incredibly original narrator, and her point of view is so sharp and so very funny. She is unabashedly herself, and I loved that part. It’s fun to be in her head, even thought some of the other folks are less vivid.
You did such a great job with this review, Jen! I’ll be curious to see how Martin follows this up.
Completely agree with this review. I really liked this book; Marlee is hilarious and a big part of the book is her relationships with her friends and family. Her father is just what a dad should be–super supportive, no questions asked and just hilarious with Gavin. Her friends were lovely and the parts where they are hanging out together are my favourite bits of the book. She and Naomi, the other p.o.c. football wife, spark off each other in the way you want a girlfriend to do. In some respects it is almost like the romance doesn’t matter, the rest of the book is so solid. It is only the men who don’t quite come alive, and I found myself not caring. I am looking forward to the next book, hoping for a bit more romance.
That’s how I felt about the book; the men were very static (except for Marlee’s father; Kathy above me is right about him!). Solid b territory for me for everything else.
I wanted to like this: Marlee was a great character. This was a DNF for me because of all the hate directed at her for one (manufactured) reason or another. Authors should try and be creative about ways to create tension and drama without constant physical and mental assault on a character. Oh, that and the male characters were very one-dimensional.