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Book Review: Savage Rivals

by Becca Steele

Source: Google Images

Asher Henderson.

Captain of the Highnam Academy football team, and the bane of my existence.

As Alstone High’s team captain, I’ve been pitted against him from the beginning, but our conflict isn’t only reserved for the pitch. Everyone knows we’re enemies. From our first encounter, our rivalry has been escalating, spiralling out of control.

Until one night when everything between us changed.

He pushed me too far, and we crossed a line that should never have been crossed.

Now, I can’t get him out of my head.

Can we ever be more than rivals, or are there too many obstacles in our way?

One thing I know for sure.

Things between us will never be the same again.

Source: Goodreads (2021)

Read Like an Early 2000s Romance YA-ish Novel

The premise of Savage Rivals wasn't that bad. Rivalling main characters, haters to lovers – literally because I could actually feel that they hated each other in the beginning. Really, the only problem I had was Steele's writing style. Unfortunately, because it's the writing style I disliked, I could not quite enjoy read Savage Rivals.

This is a quick paced and extremely short book, it should not have taken me long to finish it but it did. While reading Savage Rivals, I could only think about how amateur the writing felt. I am not expecting writing like Jane Austen or Emily Henry or even Penelope Douglas. Just give me something that does not scream childish. Yet the whole time I was reading this book, I thought it was written by a child writing fan-fiction. I might not read as much as I would like to, but I was honestly shocked when I found out this was a 2021 publication yet it felt like an early 21st century publication. Or you know, a bad teen romcom movie.

Due to that, there was a severe lack of development. I understand that to some people, the line separating hate and love is very thin but I would have liked to see something other than hatred between our two main characters before their first kiss. Like I mentioned earlier on, the hatred Asher and Levi had for each other was obvious and genuine. Unfortunately, during the haters to lovers period, I could not sense anything. It was as if, one second they truly hated each other and the next second, they could not hide their adoration for each other. There was simply no development there at all to justify the boys' feelings for each other. Personally, I felt that Asher's feelings for Levi's car had a better development, you could see Asher's distaste and gradually, a love for it.

I really wanted to like Savage Rivals but upon finishing it, it sadly does not deserve anything more than 2 stars.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆