Review of "Mile High"

Sparking water with extra lime, anyone?

This was a long time coming, but I finally, finally, FINALLY finished Mile High by Liz Tomforde. It felt like forever, but it has been done. My 16th book of the year.

Mile High is the first in the Windy City series of interconnected, stand-alone books, following various sports teams around Chicago. This one starts out with the Chicago Raptors, the NHL team for the city. Stevie, the FMC, is the flight attendant for the team, and Zanders, as he is referred to in the whole story, is a defensemen on the Raptors and the playboy of the team with a reputation.

At the beginning of the season, their playful banter is so funny and realistic. She’s trying to do her job, he’s making it difficult for fun, she isn’t giving into his antics and he’s surprised by her not doing so. No one turns Evan Zanders down??? He makes it his mission to make her crack even a little. But the thing is, she’s not allowed to fraternize with the players. None of the flight attendants are. Unless you’re Tara of course.

That makes their banter and flirting difficult. She’s out at a bar and he shows up, and thus the whole “you following me?” bit starts. One of my FAVORITE bits in the book!!! Every time they ran into one another outside of the plane, it became their thing. And it was the sweetest thing ever, every time one of them said it, it made me so giddy. Just enough flirting but still keeping it friendly. It even followed all the way to the end of the book when he appears at the dog shelter during the Stanley Cup parade. UGH MY HEART.

I especially loved the whole “he falls first and hard” trope after the first time they sleep together. When it was supposed to be a one time thing. The fact that he was immediately wanting her to stay after they decided it was only supposed to be one time for the benefit of one another to just get off, oooh! So perfect.

While Zanders has his flaws, the thing I loved most about him was how he recognized Stevie had a lot of insecurities and issues with how she looked, yet he still stuck around and told her, even if she struggled to love herself, he would love her body enough on days she just can’t look at herself in the mirror. That comment got me so bad!!! 

Now, as much as I did love the story and relationship between Zanders and Stevie, this book was far too long. It could have been about 100 pages or even 200 pages shorter. Every time an issue came up, whether it was Zanders not feeling worthy enough to have his fans see the real him, or Stevie not feeling good enough, as soon as I thought things were resolved, the next chapter we were back to square one. And while it’s realistic, it was too much. It was so back and forth and looping around constantly, I’m like, this is ridiculous!!!! Didn’t they just agree to be honest with people and now they’re saying it’s not going to happen???? Too many set backs to the point it got boring.

Another thing that really bugged me…do we not have any other descriptors for blue eyes??? The amount of times that “blue-green” was used to describe, not even Stevie’s eyes but her brother’s as well is just beyond ridiculous. The next book I read after this one used such a perfect descriptor for one character’s eyes and it was a breath of fresh air. This, along with the continuous noting of Zanders wearing gold rings and wearing rings and Stevie’s gold rings…please use a thesaurus or dictionary!!!! Like even a “sparkling blue and green” would have been fine, but I guess not.

I will say, the last 10 chapters, specifically from the 378 page mark to about 456 (in a physical book) was very enjoyable. Everyone hates on third act break ups, but I feel like I’m in the minority of liking them. When they’re done right, I will say. And I think this one was done so well, I loved the angst and tension it brought, how close they were to losing one another with Stevie planning on moving to Seattle. Aside from why he did it, I found it quite entertaining. And that was the easiest part of the book to get through because it was actually moving instead of dragging on.

All in all, I found it to be a really nice and lovely story, and I would have loved it even more if it were shorter. No romance book needs to be more than 500 pages, no more than MAYBE 450 at the most. Below is my overall rating.