Aw...I love this story!

xx

I was mad at Hayden in this chapter because she couldn't even do a small favor for her own father. What's it going to cost her to just coach the team while her dad goes to his brother's wedding. Can't she understand that, plus all she practically has to do is watch the boys and that's it. Anyway good chapter. I'll be reading the ones after it i just felt like reviewing this one. I like your writing style btw.

ha ha, it would seem that the guys are falling for an "older woman" ha ha. well not really, shes only a year older...

I just want to tell you that I love this story! I'm not done yet, but I'm really loving it so far. I love how you incorporated basketball into this story and it's getting me to actually appreciate the sport a lot more than I used to. lol. Thanks for sharing the story!

So I’m sure you must get this a lot, but wow. This is an amazing story, and you’ve done an amazing job with character development. You give us a wonderful amount of dialogue mixed in with the emotions and actions of your characters. I will say that perhaps you could do a little more with describing the area in which this is all set. You haven’t really given us mush if a setting other that Eugene, Oregon. Sure we have the guy’s house, and you’ve done a decent job of explaining that, but I’m not really sure about Hayden’s house, or the “Old Gym”. I feel that the “old Gym” is something important, just by giving it the name you seem to make it so, yet the most we get is the layout of the parking lot, and minor details of the court, which many of us envision anyway as Basketball is one of the better known sports.

You’ve done an amazing job describing Hayden’s character, and also with the character of Adam. They seem really well rounded and I can understand the turmoil both are going through in their decision to date. I do have to comment on the set up of the story. While I love the fact that we get both the view of Hayden, and the view of Adam, I think it takes away from the story. Don’t get me wrong, I love knowing what Adam is thinking, but you loose so much of the mystery when you put his side in. we don’t get to wonder with Hayden about what Adam is thinking because you tell us. We don’t get to feel hurt at who the pretty blonde with Adam is because we already know (As a reader though we did get to feel embarrassed for Hayden when we met the blonde because we already knew who she was, but we can feel that same embarrassment and relief when she finds out. We loose the effect of feeling the turmoil of thinking he’s married because we already know who she is. We miss the wondering of who she could actually be because, well again, we already know).

You set up a first person narrative in chapter one, with your reader following HAyden's thoughts and actions, but hen you switch it up. I’m not sure how long it goes on but eventually Adam is introduced, and we loose a little of the closeness we have to Hayden because we now have Adam. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, because Adam adds an amazing point of view to the piece, but we loose some of the closeness we have to Hayden because we also see what Adam is thinking.

Ultimately it’s up to you what you do, but whether you use the Adam parts as a separate story of keep them as they are, you need to get ride of their names at the start of each of their thoughts. It’s distracting as a reader to see Hayden’s name, and then Adams name in bold whenever their thoughts start. You’ve built up these characters, trust your reader to know when each of them is speaking, something as simple as a large space (three skipped lines for example) in the page, followed by a * or a – is enough. Trust in you writing that you have built strong enough characters for us to realize who is speaking to us.

Also, if you do choose to keep Adam as a separate narrator in the story we need to meet him sooner. They way you have it set-up; we don’t see Adams thoughts until chapter four. That’s not soon enough if you what to use two narrators for this story, as a reader I need him in the first chapter. You introduce him in words before chapter four, but it’s simply not enough. I started reading thinking that this was Hayden’s story, but it’s not.

I truly do love Adams thoughts, but they put me to at ease right now. I just feel that knowing both side of their emotion that they’ll end up together. I realize it’s only chapter 17, but I just have this sense that, and I don’t want to ruin anything (even though the story is complete), so I’ll just say I think they get together behind everyone’s back, people find out and all hell breaks free, but I still feel that in the end they will end up together. And that may just be the romantic in me, but that romantic will want that whether I know what Adam is thinking or not. You’ve just made Hayden’s character so believable, and life like that I feel I could cry with her.

For example, we don’t have Callie’s point of view, so I’m sitting in this situation with Hayden wondering what is going to happen. I’m worrying along with Hayden about how Callie will react. Will she understand? Will she be furious? I don’t know, and I love it, I love the tension the situation has put me in and I’m a nervous wreck right along side Hayden.

I feel like I’ve been rambling, and please, I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings in anyway, because your story is absolutely amazing. I was originally only going to comment on one line in chapter seventeen, which is, “Apparently my facial expression had betrayed me somewhere along the line, because his next comment wasn’t a question, but a statement. ‘You are lovesick, aren’t you? Hell, Spike...it’s not her, is it?’”. I was going to say, that by placing the question mark at the end you make it a question. You’ve told us it was a comment, but yet you state it as a question. It’s a contradiction to your words. Maybe if you just end Drake’s words after “You are love sick.” With a period, and then make both boys pause before Drake continues with “It’s her, isn’t it?” you would better convince your reader that it was a statement, otherwise just make it a question that Drake is asking, both would be effective routes.

Well I have been rambling, and it’s getting late. I’m going to say one last time that you have an amazing story here that I can’t wait to finish (at a more reasonable hour considering I’ve got to be at work in 6 hours). I hope I haven’t scared you with my forwardness; you have an amazing piece of work here.

Good luck with any editing you do,

Artsy

oh my golly

i love this story

i am so sad this is the last chapter because i've totally fallen in love with it.

I actually don't know much about basketball. No one in my immediate family plays it,(we're a soccer family) but I just moved closer to my cousins who do play basketball. My one cousin in paritcular really wants basketball in his future. He goes to a private high school on a basketball scholarship and does camps and all that jazz. He's actually only ten days older than me but I'm 5'3" and he's 6'5". This story got me really interested in the sport and now I want to sit him down and make him tell me all he knows. I learned a lot from this story too, so now I know more than that there's an offense and defense and you're supposed to get the ball in the hoop. ]

to answer some of your questions:

Yes, I am glad Hayden and Adam are together and as sad as it is I'm glad that Wells is going to the NBA. LJ deserves someone better than Cailie. I never really liked her.

I liked everything. I know that sounds cheesey but its true. I liked the romance, the sports, and the drama.

I liked the drama the least. I know I just said I liked it and I do because it made the story, but at the moment of reading it I'd get so frusterated. hahah

My favorite characters were the typical ones: LJ, Wells, Adam, Hayden, and Novak. My least favorites were: Cailie, Jake, and I still don't like Hayden's dad that much.

My favorite moments were the happy ones. ] My least favorite moments were the sad ones of course.

I really don't have an construtive criticism to give you.

I would love a sequel. ] This story rocks.

good!

Holy crap this story is insanely long and it took me 3 days to finish it - it would have taken me longer except now I've stayed up till 4:20am glued to my computer and doing nothing but reading this! IT'S SO FREAKING GOOD THOUGH and I loove everything about it. The chemistry is completely THERE and everything just happens so RIGHT and PERFECTLy and I thought it was amazing how you managed to draw parallels between Hayden (btw, LOVE the name!) and Wells' lives and how she repeated back to him his own advice and honest to god, usually that'd work out pretty cheesy but I don't know, something about the way you did it just had the tears building up inside of me. It was seriously beautiful.

I love this whole entire story. The passion and all of the character development is amazing. The twists like with Jake and Cailie were completely unexpected. I have to admit that maybe in the 2nd chapter I was completely thrown off and confused by the abundance of characters just being thrown at me all at once but I slipped into the drift of things quickly, with an occasional brainfart regarding who had what nickname :x

Gah I'm SO happy that Adam & Hayden got their happy ending and seriously, fuck the media. They're not controlling OR's performance in games. That's what I like about sports, as opposed to movies or models or whatever. It's so much more real. You control your future as opposed to these loonies who don't even know you.

But anyways, that was just a side comment, haha (: I'm sure that this review would be so much more comprehensive and profound if it wasn't 4:20 in the morning -.-;; My eyes are dropping and my brain is frying but it was completely worth it because I couldn't seem to tear myself away from your story all night until I had finished. I'm going to read the revised and shorter version too, but I wanted to read the original first :) I tend to like the longer fics anyways, but your chapters themselves are pretty long so it shouldn't actually be a problem.

You're an EXCELLENT writer, and you really seem to have a complete grasp on each and every one of your characters and their personalities, and etc. This story is amazing :) Please keep up the good work and I hope that you'll continue to write more stories in the future. Alex & Hayden... wow. I am so unbelievably happy for them :) Haha. I love it. I usually am completely uncertain for the characters about whether or not it's really love that they're sharing but even though I myself don't even know what love is, I'm definitely certain that it's between Adam & Hayden.

Btw, LJ is almost my favorite character. I lovee him. Cailie seems like a little bitch but I get it, it's understandable, and it also explains why she was like, "WHAT? you talked to Jake?" but yeah. I mean, let's forgive her. She's human :x

Anyways, yeah. I think this review was supposed to end a few paragraphs ago, but there I went ranting again. Anyways, yeah, keep up the good work!

- Alyssa

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the single best story I have ever read. There was so much that I loved about it... I loved Wells, and I was so sad when he decided to skip senior year for the NBA. I love Ryan and his crush on Emily... I love Adam and Hayden... even if I did want a LJ Hayden pairing- well actually what I wanted was an LJ and me pairing, but that wasn't exactly a choice.

To cut this short, this story made me laugh, it made me cry, it kept me up until 2:40 in the morning just so I could finish it... and now? I want a sequel.

are you kidding me? there is a revised version? don't get me wrong this is probably my favorite story i have ever read and i have read a lot. anyway it would have been nice to have been informed of a shorter version that is probably just as good becasue every spare second i got, i was reading this story so i could know what happened and it took too long! lol anyway this is the BESTIST STORY EVER! i really love it, great job!

Yea! I love this story, I kept thinking about it all day and looking forward to writing my review...it's a lot more entertaining than math I tell you. Before I answer your questions I just want you to know that you did an amazing job with this story and I hope that you write a sequel, I love Hayden, Adam, Wells, LJ, and all the rest of the guys!

Yes this story did end how I hoped it would! :) :)

My favorite part...Brucie's speech, when Adam said that he saw himself holding Hayden instead of the trophy...in general, I liked the way that the emotions of the characters were real and easily relatable.

The least...Wells leaving, but that I guessed would happen so it also made me feel very smart. All of it was wonderful!

My favorite characters were the four main ones Adam (so sweet and perfect), Hayden (talented yet not always self-confident...very realistic personality), LJ (how can you not love him), and Wells (someone that everyone can talk to, and is very down to earth no matter his amazing talent)

Least favorite characer is, hands down, Cailie. If she had just been truthful from the beginning than none of her problems would have been so huge.

I accidentally covered the favorite moment, so least favorite. When Hayden's dad yelled at her for being with Adam. It made me mad because he was putting his team over his own daughter.

I think this was perfect, and if you ever get it published I would so buy it! The most amazing part about it was the fact that I don't really like basketball and yet you made me care for this team, and hope that they win, and made me think about basketball all weekend...that has never happened before that lol!

Thanks for the GREAT read!

Quincy

I haven't finished this chapter yet, and I usually save a review until the end of the story if it is already finished but I have to tell you something.

Brucie's speech made me cry. I am not the type of person to cry when reading/watching movies. I get the feeling and I can feel the tears welling up, but they never fall. Except if you count that time when Sirius Black died in HP but besides that never.

Your writing has touched me and I just wanted you to know that. While I was reading this I could picture all my relationships in my head, the ones that I have mourned and the ones that I still experience, and I matched them up. Thank you for sharing that with me.

Quincy

Great story.

I knew they were gonna get together! This is such a cute story. I loved it.

Hi! Not very good at english but I'll try to make it understandable. lol

I've been reading this story for a couple of months and finished it a minute ago.I can say without any dought that this was one of the greatest stories I've seen here and I truly believe that you have talent. You created not only an original story line (with sports! YEAH! LOL), but truly adorable characters that could be real. And a thing that doesnt happen very often, other characters really important in the story beside the "couple", who we get to know and love!

But the most important thing is that you're story can do in a person what a good book/story should do - feel.

I'd like to add that finaly I found someone that can make an epilogue! lol...really a lot of people dont know how to do one! And I really loved it cos, all wraped together, like Hayden said "and as I thought back to December, to that fateful day that I had pulled my car into my father’s driveway, I couldn’t help but smile."

And I almost cried with the way you make Wells goodbye...and this was brilliant: "He bent over and slammed his locker shut for the last time, the sound resounding eerily throughout the locker room. It was an echo that absolutely screamed closure." Really it was!

Just to finish...I think you improved you're writing skills a lot with this story. We can notice really diferences between this last chapters and the ones in the begining.(Even in the story line...I started to get hooked in your story in advanced chapters) I guess I'll check you're revised version to see the changes. And I'll read the sequel. I havent looked at it yet, but I guess it will focus on LJ - what I dont mind cos he rocks! XD - and I have realy big expectations so don't disappoint me! lool j/k

Anyway...I hope to see more great stories coming from you and well...I wish you the best of luck! But before that I'll let you with a great quote form none other then LJ...cof...cof:“I’ve heard that so many times in the past couple of weeks, good Jesus. You’d think he was my freaking wife!” lol!