In Rush Me, Rachael Hamilton stumbles into the wrong party one night and suddenly finds herself in a world inhabited by NFL football players …. and at odds with popular quarterback, Ryan Carter.  Rachael knows nothing about sports, preferring a world of book and theater, but she somehow finds herself friends with some of the team, which means she also ends up spending time with Ryan.  As they spend time together, Rachael quickly realizes that some of her initial judgments about Ryan were wrong.  Can she let herself give in to the sexy, smart athlete or is she playing a very dangerous game? 

This was a very fast read for me – I finished it in just a day – and I loved the plot, although I’m not sure I understood all their problems.  Rachael tends to run from romantic entanglements and gets very defensive when pushed, which causes problems with Ryan who doesn’t have a lot of experience with real relationships and also tends to get defensive easy.  It doesn’t lead to a very easy road to love for the two. 

I can see his perspective pretty well – he’s the golden boy of sports and has had everything handed to him, including girls.  Yes, he works hard but the life of a multi-millionaire athlete has fewer everyday problems than for average people.  He tends to give up when faced with trouble in his relationship with Rachael because he’s never had to work at one before.  But he’s also a decent guy.  He works hard for his team, he cares about the other players and those less fortunate, he is nice to his fans and he does charitable works.  He may be enjoying his playboy life but that is understandable and he’s quite appealing. 

It’s Rachael I’m not sure I understand … and sometimes even like.  Mostly she’s a very fun character but she has these bi-polar moments and has a hair trigger on her emotions.  Over all though I thought she was great and very entertaining.  There were actually a couple of moments that made me laugh out loud.  And I loved Ryan’s teammates – they are big, bad football players with quirky attitudes and a good sense of fun – and I really hope to see future books about this team.

Some readers might be put off by the writing style.  It’s not quite as tight as it could have been and there were a couple of times that I was confused by the timeline, but it moved very quickly.  Rush Me may not be a lighthearted read, instead dealing with some convoluted on-again off-again relationship problems, but it is definitely an engaging one and I quickly found myself hoping for a happy ending for them.  And I think that Parr did a great job of giving them one that works.