My feelings are mixed. While I think that Playing Hurt was definitely well done and explored a topic that is too often avoided in YA literature, it failed to really draw me in and make me care for its characters. I very much appreciated that Holly Schindler didn’t shy away from making Chelsea’s and Clint’s relationship a very physical one, fuelled by mutual attraction and lust at first, but developing into a tender friendship and helping both of them to come to terms with their past. Sex is not More...

I first fell in love with Holly Schindler's writing in her debut novel A Blue So Dark. Holly isn't just a story teller, she makes you experience the story along with the characters, evoking such strong emotions, you can't help but be utterly captivated.

I have to admit I was little wary of the whole sports aspect. I'm sure it's from some underlying issue I have unresolved from high school. Although I don't really have anything against jocks, I mean I married one! But for some reason, that put me More...

Alright, let’s see if I can bring some order into my jumbled thoughts and feelings about this one.

What bothered me:

1. The cheating. It’s not like it bothered me to the point that I wanted to stop reading or anything drastic like that but it did make me feel slightly uncomfortable and I have to agree with Gabe (view spoiler)[Chelsea is a selfish bitch and all the things she accused Gabe of towards the end of the book didn’t make any sense to me at all. (hide spoiler)] Even though Gabe made me want to throw up because he was s More...

Ok, so I loved this book. It wasn't at ALL what I expected! I thought it was going to be overly sports-related, which is ok, and I thought I was going to be mad at the cover, for making people think it was a romance....but I was SO wrong. The cover is perfect, and the romance......wow, it was steamy! Actually, the cover may be too tame! And even though basketball was the backdrop of Chelsea's story, it did not dominate the storyline. In fact, I thought that Clint's story was more compelling.

I co More...

I promised to offer my own three cents concerning my impression of Playing Hurt one or two weeks ago at the Corner. Well, now our discussion time has officially passed and I've decided to voice my opinion here instead, because what else does a basic review consist of?

Like several of my GR friends I was very eager to try out Holly Schindler's latest novel, because the contemporary YA mixture of sports, problems and romance made me immediately associate Dairy Queen and Amazing Grace and caused me More...

Rating: 3.5 stars

Favourite Quote: "Funny thing about fear, I guess, is that if you just look away from it, toward something else - like dark eyes in a beautiful face, a lock of black hair hanging over a sweaty forehead - you realize you've turned a full hundred-and eighty degrees away from fear.
You're staring straight into your own strength."

I have been dying to read Playing Hurt even since I heard about it back in June last year. I love a good YA contemp romance (which it is) especially one wit More...

Chelsea was a rising star on the basketball court, likely headed for her choice of big name colleges on an athletic scholarship. All of that comes crashing down in one moment.
The story picks up several months later as she and her family go on a vacation to a lake in Minnesota.
There has also been a life-altering accident in Clint's life two years prior and he's struggling to come to terms with what happened.
Chelsea and Clint are both trying to be safe and protect themselves. Even though Chelsea h More...

I regret having missed out on Holly Schindler's debut, A Blue So Dark (the book got lost in the mail) but I'm so glad I got a chance to read her sophomore novel. Because Playing Hurt was a lovely read.
Why?
It's got
an ex-star basketball player
a hot boot camp trainer
heating things up
in the midst
of summer.

Easy, eh? I thought I had it all worked out. And yet I loved reading it.

Playing Hurt owes its success to characterization. Chelsea and Clint, the two main characters, whose PoVs you get to read in More...

3 stars.

This was a cute, engaging read, but ultimately lacked a little luster for me.

The characters were nice but could have had more oomph and zest, the setting could have come more alive and become more actively a part of the story, especially considering that Chelsea and Clint meet while Chelsea in on summer vacation with her parents in Northern Minnesota. They are supposed to be 'training', as Chelsea was once a star basketball player on the road to success before a bad accident on the cou More...

I love the way this story begins! Chelsea is at the beginning of her senior year, playing a high school basketball game. She's amazing. She's on fire. She's a star in her small town community. She has her future mapped out because of her basketball scholarships. She's sweating and she's in pain. Her hip is shooting daggers down to her toes. She's hurt but she can't quit. The scene morphs into Chelsea watching the last game on a home movie her brother was shooting at the time. She's in her bedroo More...

This book is a tough one for me to review. I stayed up late reading last night and the first thing I did this morning was pick the book up and finish off the last 100 pages before doing anything else. Holly Schindler is a great writer. I was pulled into this story and didn't want to put the book down.

The only issue I have with this book is the sexual content. The books starts off with Chelsea being embarrassed that she is still a virgin. Being the conservative parent and reader that I am - to m More...

Playing Hurt by Holly Schindler is a novel about a traumatic change in the protagonist’s life. Chelsea who is in high school is the school’s team star basketball player. Many colleges are looking out for her recruiting her to their colleges. She was always the star player until she accidentally injured her hips. But she continued to play like she always did but everything changed in a moment, she fell during a game and broke her hips. This changed her greatly because she was not able to play any More...

This one was a hit or miss for most people and it missed for me.

For starters it was slow and kind of boring. I'm all for a book that's almost completely character development but you have to make the issues real and intense and easy to relate to.

I felt like not enough was made of Chelsea trying to figure out who she was if she didn't play basketball anymore. I also felt like the conflict with her father wasn't drawn out enough. We barely got any of that and therefore I couldn't really force myse More...

Went from 3 to 2 to 1 because I just felt grosser and grosser the more I read. I loved the setting, but the first chapter made it very clear we should all be on Team Gabe. Chelsea Keyes is nothing but a self-absorbed whiny brat. I was liking Clint all right until the halfway point, and then my respect for him rapidly began draining away as well. I intensely dislike how this book's basic message seemed to be, "Sex will fix you/make you feel alive again" - and there was WAY too much detail in that More...

This review originally appeared at Tabitha's Book Blog

3.5 stars

This is the first book that I've read by Holly Schindler, and I will definitely be reading her other books after this. Playing Hurt is no where near being one of my favorite books, but it was an enjoyable read and sometimes that's all you really need in a book. The overall storyline for this book was a really interesting one I really loved getting to read about sports in a book for once. This book has definitely inspired me to start More...

Playing Hurt is a well written and engaging novel. The writing is superb; well paced and easy to fall into.

Holly does a great job at setting up the story with Chelsea reflecting on her injury. This provided a good starting point and provided context as the story developed. The camp setting was also intriguing and Holly’s deep and concise writing style made it easy to imagine the warm summer days on the lake.

I thought the split narrative was well executed, adding a fullness to the story. The ch More...

Playing Hurt centers on Chelsea, an all-star senior basketball player who suffers a serious injury during a game that crushes her chances at ever playing basketball competitively again. Goodbye college dreams, goodbye the sense of knowing exactly what to do next, and goodbye to knowing who you are. The only thing that didn’t completely turn upside down for Chelsea was her relationship with her boyfriend, Gabe. If anything, that relationship grew stronger through her year of recovery. Fast forwar More...

If you’ve been following my blog for a while now, you obviously already know that teen romances aren’t the typical fare here at the Primer (unless of course, there happens to be something supernatural involved). I’ll even go so far as to admit that I wasn’t really sure I was even going to enjoy reading Playing Hurt by Holly Schindler…not only because it didn’t fall into any of my preferred genres, but also because the male and female leads were grounded in an athletics background. During my high More...

Playing Hurt was extremely disappointing to me. I was pretty excited, because I'm all about YA novels featuring athletes, and this had an intriguing premise: two young former athletes who have stopped playing their respective sports for different reasons. Unfortunately, it was more or less a schlocky teen romance with a lot of mixed, confused sports references. I never connected with Chelsea, the main character who's a former star basketball (yay!), and there wasn't a lot of chemistry between he More...

In A Nutshell:
This story was a little slow in the beginning, but worth it because it came together so well in the end. It is a story of healing and of creating new dreams when the ones you had are taken away. But most of all, it is a story of learning to really live and love.

Review:
As a senior in high school, Chelsea has to come to terms with the loss of her dreams of college basketball, a goal that has given her focus and determination for as long as she can remember. What does she have if she More...

Looking at others' reviews, I am in a minority when I say that this book was only okay for me. The character development was not deep enough. I liked the idea of the sports injury, and how Clint and Chelsea were both dealing with their own issues. The romantic scenes were sizzling, but I wanted more "pre" - more development of the relationship through conversations, banter, tension. That just didn't happen for me.

Here's the summary: Chapters are told from the alternating points of view of Chelse More...

It's hard to say, since I have 6 more months this year, but this is one of the best reads this year for me. Such an extraordinary tale of learning to live again and finding a path in life that still helps you live your dream. Chelsea and Clint were exactly what each other needed to heal and starting living again. They were fantastic.

I don't really like love triangles. In this, we don't really see much of Gabe though, since he is left behind. Maybe it's because I couldn't get attached to him, but More...

Chelsea was a star player on her high school basketball team until overuse and a bad fall destroyed her hip. Clint’s hockey playing made him a hometown hero until his girlfriend died in a car accident on the way to one of his games. Physical and emotional trauma keep Chelsea and Clint out of the game, and both are left wondering what to do with themselves now that the lives they’ve imagined are no longer the ones they’ll be leading.

After Chelsea’s high school graduation, her family goes on vacat More...

After hearing so many wonderful reviews on this book, I just knew I had to give it a try! I am a sucker for sweet and romantic young adult books with a great balance of angst!

I was a little wary of the theme being focused on sports since I am not into that scene now or when I was in high school. I wasn't the jock type in school and I certainly was not a fan of anything that included running! Yet, I found that the author made sure to balance out the obsession of sports with the teen angst that Ch More...

Some books I devour and enjoy, then lovingly place upon my bookshelf where I can walk by it and smile, remembering that first reading with fondness. I may pick them back up weeks, months, or years down the road, but often I just put them up like trophies in a ‘display case’ while I move onto new stories, worlds, and characters.

Other books I turn the final page, close the cover, sigh, and then start all over again. These books teach me about myself or shed light on something I never thought of be More...

Chelsea "Nitro" Keyes is having a brutally hard time re-establishing her identity after the horrible, career-ending hip injury that's left her scarred inside and out. She has the perfect boyfriend, Gabe, and friends, but feels disconnected without basketball. And she feels as if her father blames her for the accident. He thinks that working out at a boot camp with a personal trainer while they're on a family vacation will help bring her out of her funk. Instead, Chelsea finds herself madly attra More...

*SPOILERS*

Don't know how do I feel about this book. It started out great and it ended in a bad way. There were few things I loved and there were some that pissed me off. Let's get started with the good things.
What I really loved were the hot and steamy scenes with Chelsea and Clint. I just still can't get used to have this kind of scenes in YA books. Other thing I loved is Clint. He is such a good guy that went through a lot. His girlfriend died in a car crash going to his hockey game so he sto More...

Even though I loved Holly Schindler's debut, A Blue So Dark, I wasn't sure whether I was going to like this one. Playing Hurt sounds really different from A Blue So Dark, and I was kind of worried about the sports aspect, because that's just not my thing. But there was no reason to worry - the topics of Holly Schindler's two novels are really different, but I loved Playing Hurt just as much as A Blue So Dark! The sports aspect isn't that big of a deal, either - yeah, the two main characters are More...

Chelsea was the star basketball player at her high school until she slipped on some spilled soda during a game and blew her hip out. After graduation, Chelsea and her family head to Minnesota to a resort where Chelsea meets Clint. However, Chelsea has a boyfriend waiting for her at home and Clint has a tragedy of his own to get through.


I enjoyed this book and thought that it was very realistic when it came to the issues Chelsea and Clint were going through. I wish they weren't the "perfect, tan More...