Review and Author Interview: Double Play, by Jill Shalvis

In a testament either to the power of Twitter or my complete lack of impulse control, I purchased Jill Shalvis’s Double Play for my Kindle on Elyssa Papa’s recommendation.  After a bit of a slump in my romance reading, I am pleased to report that I could hardly put down this fun, sweet, sexy romance that taught me more than a few things about baseball, and even offered some interesting explorations into the difference between privacy and secrecy, divided loyalty, conflicts of interest, and the role of performance enhancing drugs in professional sport. This was my first book by Ms. Shalvis, but it won’t be my last. Here’s my review, followed by a short interview with the author.

Pace is the gorgeous star pitcher on a California expansion team. He feels responsible for the franchise’s success, but that’s okay, since baseball is what he eats, sleeps, and breathes. When we meet him he’s got a possible shoulder injury on his mind, and the last thing he wants to do is answer questions from a nosy reporter he meets in the parking lot after practice one day. She would be Holly, our heroine, whose good looks are carefully tucked away beneath a no nonsense reporter exterior. Like Pace, Holly is devoted to her work, and not exactly looking for love.  Pace and Holly face both internal and external conflicts. They both have some lingering issues from less than perfect childhoods, Pace has an awful lot on his mind, and Holly in particular was burned by a past relationship with someone who asked her to choose between love and career.  The conflicts themselves are not original, but the way they unfold and are handled felt very fresh.

This book was very funny. Here’s one exchange, when Pace’s uniform zipper breaks, and Holly offers to fix it:

“I can fix it.” Holly pulled her purse off her shoulder and began digging through its mysterious depths with one hand while gesturing to Pace for the pants with her other.

“Seriously,” he said. “I can just …” But he trailed off as she came up with a small sewing kit. “You sew?”

“Uh-huh. And I can also own property and vote. Want your pants fixed or not?”

A running gag involving the effect of Holly and Pace’s kisses – but no more! — on the team’s game performance made for a lot of steamy and humorous moments in the locker room shower stall.  If you like romances in which the hero and heroine get to know each other before climbing into bed, you’ll appreciate the slow build of Double Play.

But Double Play actually gets into some very interesting serious issues as well, managing to merge character in plot in a really satisfying way.  Holly’s life is journalism, and although she knows very well she’s compromised by her crush on the team’s star pitcher, she still wants to dig the dirt on the team. As she and Pace get closer, and as she finds herself becoming friends with other players and team management, Holly has to decide where the line is between being loyal to those you care about and failing to be true to yourself. She also has to learn the difference between healthy privacy and unhealthy secrecy. For his part, Pace has to stop putting all his life’s eggs in one basket, and learn that life is not a zero sum game – falling in love with Holly doesn’t mean he’ll be less of a player or teammate, but a better, stronger one.

A subplot involving possible doping gives Pace and Holly a believable vehicle for working through a lot of these issues, and, was actually pretty gripping. It’s a very complicated issue, which Shalvis communicates without being preachy.  It’s easy to single out the players who get caught, but are they really the only ones to blame when fans demand bigger hits, faster pitches, and other superhuman athletic feats that a generation ago would have been viewed as impossible? And what about the complicity of coaches, managers, suppliers? What’s the moral difference between enhanced technology in equipment, and surgery, and stimulants? What is a talented player to do when his competitors all use and he’ll be at an unfair disadvantage if he doesn’t? In Double Play, different points of view are aired by different characters, and the gray areas are explored without detracting from the focus on the romance.

Not everything worked perfectly — Pace’s off the record charity work with some local youths was a bit too perfect to be true. Also, I did wonder why a reporter who works for an online media outlet that her own editor refers to as a “blog” would get such privileged access to the team. Finally, there were a couple of moments near the end when I felt little misunderstandings were being used to artificially keep Pace and Holly apart.

But overall, I found this book not only enjoyable, but so interesting, that in my post-read glow, I impulsively fired off an email to Jill Shalvis, who graciously agreed to answer a few questions. Only the last one (#6) can be considered a bit of a spoiler. Enjoy!

Here it is, my first author interview:

Jill Shalvis

1. I often find that chapter epigraphs are either (a) relevant to the chapter, or (b) interesting to read on their own, but rarely (c) both. Yours are the happy exception. I loved the quotations about baseball that began each chapter. Did you have fun finding them?

JShalvis: I did have fun finding the quotes.  I didn’t worry so much about the chapter content versus each quote though.  As long as the quote involved baseball and made me smile or think, that was good enough for me.

JShalvis: I just wanted to show both sides of the story fairly, and not pass judgment. That was the goal for me.  And to see if I couldn’t get people thinking, and understanding both sides.

3. One thing I loved about Double Play was that BOTH Holly and Pace’s careers were important for them in ways that created joy in their personal lives but conflict in their relationship. It would have been very easy to focus on just Pace’s career since his is so high profile. How did the idea arise to create conflict out of a reporter-subject relationship? Was it a conscious decision to keep Holly focused on her career rather than having her chuck it all and become an MLB groupie?

JShalvis: I wanted to write about two “workaholic” types.  Two people whose jobs were very important to them and defined them as people.  And once I did that, there was no way I could then have Holly be willing to chuck her career, not even for the love of her life.  They had to work it out.

JShalvis: It’s a new world, and that new world gets their information in new ways. The net is one of them, and I just decided pay homage to that.

5. Keeping sexual tension going in contemporary romances, especially with characters who are sexually experienced adults, can be a challenge. I loved the way you used baseball superstition  to create amazing sexual tension. How did it come about that you kept Holly and Pace on first base for so long?

JShalvis: I’ve written books where the hero and heroine fall into bed immediately, and books where the relationship demands time first.  All of my books are high on the sexy scale, just sometimes those scenes arrive sooner than later. There’s no real design to it, other than what each individual story dictates.  In this case, they took awhile but I think, hope, it was worth the wait.

SPOILERY QUESTION BELOW:

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6. I so enjoyed Double Play, but I cannot resist asking you one picky question. At the fancy poker charity event, Pace shows his support to Holly in a very clear and touching way. However, after the event, Pace finds Holly outside. For reasons I cannot figure out, she believes they are kaput. How can she think this? Can you enlighten me as to her mindset at this moment?

JShalvis: Holly isn’t all that experienced in matters of the heart.  Or, for that matter, trust.  She allows fear and her past to dictate some of her decisions.  Irrational as it is.  Luckily, Pace does get her past all that in the end, and we get our happily ever after, but it was never an easy path for Holly to take.

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Thank you!

Now I need your advice. Which Shalvis should I read next?