Full Count by Cori Williams

This is a decent read but it has one problem for me, it tried too hard to hurry the characters along, they obviously had more to say than the author gave them a chance to spit out.

I know that may sound and odd thing to say but I have heard so often from authors that their characters dictate what they write, that they are almost dictating what the characters in their heads are telling them, but with this, I got the feeling that Cori had just told them enough and cut them off mid-sentence.

There was enough for the story to have been developed a little more and for the timelines to have been shortened.

But all that being said the story itself was a good. It was well written and it was evocative.

It was fairly straight forward in as much as the characterisation, Paige the good girl heads off to college where she meets Dylan the boy that everyone warns her to stay away from, the guy who has a past that she could never understand and that has absolutely no interest in ever having a girlfriend… until- wait for it – yep, you got it, until he meets Paige.

A proper tomboy she has always been comfortable around male friends, her best friend growing up was Jake but this young woman is the apple of her daddy’s eye (having lost her mother during early childhood) and when she sets her sights on college significantly out of her father’s immediate reach, she is about to get schooled in more ways than one.

First of all her roommate Kitty has a few changes that she needs her to make and first on the list is the daddy approved wardrobe- these girls are going shopping!

Kitty is everything Paige isn’t so she reluctantly accepts her new roomies assistance. Paige is introduced to Chris (Kitty’s brother) and Dylan when they are out shopping. Dylan being Chris’s roommate.

The signs are evident from that first meeting that this pair are heading in a direction that no-one could have ever anticipated, so Kitty makes sure that Paige is fully up to speed on the ways of the world – Dylan style!

As far as she is concerned Dylan is someone that Paige should steer well clear of... yeh, really like that is ever going to happen.

Dylan is the campus bad boy if you believe what Kitty has to say but this bad boy has a troubled past that few have any idea about and when I read it I have to say I understood a little more about the boy.

Having never meet his mother, Dylan was a ward of the state, being passed from foster family to foster family all through his childhood. Love was a commodity that he never knew while he was growing up, it wasn’t required but he did have one love, one that he cultivated for himself, his love of baseball.

Having survived up until now with no ties to anyone but never being short of willing bedfellow, Dylan is happy with his lot in life but when he meets Paige, something inside his shifts, something clicks into place and he has someone that means something to him.

He just has to make her see that for her, he is willing to change.

This is a feel good read, it doesn’t take too much thinking about, and it is what you would expect it to be. Two kids who set out on the path to a relationship that neither of them knew they wanted  and what it took for them to battle through their upheavals and make it out the other end with their hearts and relationship still intact.