A huge thank you to Melissa Brayden for providing an ARC of Make Your Move in exchange for review.
First of all: wow. I will have to admit I was a little hesitant going into this book - I absolutely love watching Formula 1 with my friends, and over the past few years have developed pretty strong opinions about the sport. I need not have worried! It is so, so obvious just from the first few chapters that the author really did her research with regard to racing, the different series, and how her main character Reese Maddox could move up into the world of F1.
I absolutely loved Reese as a character. She's fiery, a little hotheaded, and extremely competitive, which all make her compelling - and she has the bravado to match it, which makes her a fantastic romance protagonist. While this book doesn't go into the small details of superlicence points and the like, Reese has a very believable career progression: she goes from karts, to working her way through the feeder series, and then after some drama in F2 ends up in Formula Next, which is this universe's answer to the F1 Academy. Reese is so passionate about racing that it is so obvious that on the track is where she belongs, and this makes for some nice conflict with her love interest, Sloane.
I enjoyed the exploration of trauma and mental health that this novel did with our other protagonist, the driver-turned-mentor Sloane Foster. Sloane is driven, practical, and a little bit of a perfectionist. So when she can't control her anxiety when it comes to racing…well, there's a bit of a clash. But Melissa Brayden handles it with such care and compassion, it really makes Sloane and her struggles feel real. At no point is Sloane judged or brought down by her very real ordeal in being trackside again.
This book has quite a few laugh-out-loud moments (especially when The Starting Grid, Reese's best friends from Formula next, are involved) and also some incredibly heartwrenching, edge-of-your-seat moments. It was exactly what I'm searching for in a sapphic romance: a nice balance of actual plot while still containing the perfect romantic elements. Honestly, the plot involving Reese's racing career was so good, sometimes I wanted a little less of the romance! Okay, I'm kidding about that, mostly. But this is a damn good story, and it's so well told.
The final pages indicate this is the first in a series. I absolutely cannot wait for the next book. I want to know what else The Starting Grid are getting up to, I want some more peeks in at Reese and Sloane's life together, and I really, really want to see how Cassidy is doing in future books. She was easily my favourite character.
I loved this and I cannot wait to pick up more of Melissa Brayden's books.
