Man erfährt ja schon von Clover relativ wenig, da sie uns als Leser nie so richtig in ihren Kopf lässt, man hat ständig das Gefühl, sie wäre nicht ganz greifbar.

Journalist Clover Phillips is riding high on the success of her documentary on ex-surfing great, Cory Albright - Cory had suffered a near drowning and subsequent brain injury, whilst competing. Everything felt like one big, metaphorical chess game—a literal one too (that scene was simultaneously the most/least literally sexy thing I've ever read). Hier hätte ich mir gewünscht mehr von ihm kennenzulernen und ihm dabei auch emotional näherzukommen, aber dies ist größtenteils leider nicht der Fall gewesen, so dass ich sowohl mit ihm aber auch mit Clover nicht so richtig mitempfinden konnte. Instead of drowning us in Clover and Kit, she made sure the moments we had with them together resonated and completely stole our focus.You are given slices of the story through interviews with Kit and those people in his life, simple interactions, and observations from the characters.

Not least because it features the world of snow boarding on a super pipe for fabulous tricks, and to a lesser extent some of the world of surfing. Clover, a documentary filmmaker made an award-winning film about a surfer, Cory, whose successful career is cruelly ended by a freak accident. But as she delves deeper, Clover finds herself both drawn to Kit, and even more convinced he’s hiding something. There is a lot of description of the life of a snowboarder, you will learn what a Switch Backside 1260 is and you will walk into mountain life amongst the snow bunny glitterati. Schon beim ersten Blick darauf, wollte ich mich mit einem Kakao und einer Decke auf meiner Couch einkuscheln.

However, I would have liked a bit more time with Kit, as it's a bit silly how they could fall in love when they only spend about 1 night, a few hours on a mountain and 1 game of chess together. Like in her previous books the lead female character is strong, independent and with an interesting back story. I really liked all the backstory in this - particularly with Clover's past work with Corey, the other surfer from Kit's accident, as well the slow reveals about both Kit's past and childhood, as well as Clover's.

The sport side of things did not interest me a bit, so the fact that I held on to it all through this story and was still entertained speaks volumes about the character relationships. She has a special way of weaving a story that draws you into the pages slowly and without you realizing that you just keep turning the pages and cannot stop. But the focus of her next documentary is going to be a hard nut to crack - disgraced surfer turned snowboarder Kit Foley. All the feelings – I mean the whole hate-love trope is so agonizingly fun to read about – great plot with all subplots making sense and creating a believeable turnout.Clover needs to try to hide her loathing towards Kit to try and get to the truth of what happened with Cory. The dynamics were really interesting and, even though I could pretty much guess where everyone was going to end up, I enjoyed the way it played out. The beginning is very captivating and I was instantly pulled into Clover’s world, where she has just become the star of a documentary.