Book Review: The Wall Of Winnipeg and Me – By Mariana Zapata

❝Touch my wife again, and I’ll break every bone in your goddamn body.❞

❝I’m starting to understand that you can always make time for the things that matter.❞

Ratings: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genre: Sports Romance

Year Of Release: 2016

Plot: 5/5

Characters: 5/5

Writing Style: 5/5

Romance: 5/5

❝Home is where you are. I would go anywhere for you if you wanted me there.❞

My Thoughts:

Team Graves has my heart and no thoughts just Aiden saying 

“Touch my wife again, and I’ll break every bone in your goddamn body.”

This book is one long, slow burn, and it totally sucked me in. My third sport romance and definitely not my last. It has one of my favourite premises and is pretty simple. 

✅ Slow Burn

✅Kinda Enemies to Lovers

✅Fake Marriage

✅Marriage of Convenience

✅Strong Female Lead

✅The best book husband

✅Grumpy x Sunshine

I just love the book. 

❝The only people in the world who can hurt you are those you let have that ability❞

For the past two years, Vanessa (Van) Mazur has served as football player Aiden Graves’ personal assistant. Although Aiden Graves is one of the most successful and well-known defensive footballers in the nation, few people are actually familiar with the person behind the name. maybe with the exception of Graves’ personal assistant, Vanessa Mazur. Her life revolves around his whims and needs on a daily basis, including cooking him numerous vegetarian meals, managing his social media and email accounts, keeping track of his daily schedule, dealing with his manager from hell, and rescheduling and handling the fallout when Graves decides not to attend his public events. 

Vanessa essentially “lives and breathes” Aiden’s life, all without receiving a single acknowledgement or thank you from the big guy himself. One day (she has been planning to leave far too long but didn’t have the heart too), after being exasperated and pushed too far, Vanessa finally quits. However, Aiden isn’t keen on parting with her. Aiden persuades Vanessa to marry him in an effort to keep her from leaving his life and to conveniently get rid of one of his own issues. They made a deal whereby she would be married to him for the next five years and Canadian Aiden would keep his green card by marrying an American.

I believe the story is really made by the characters. I became utterly fixated on reading these two interact with one another. Aiden is someone you just fall in love with and want to see succeed; Vanessa is strong, determined and fantastic even after everything she has been through in life. She loves the life she has created for herself. 

❝It was right then, in that instant, that I realized I might be a little in love with Aiden. Not in a way that was anything like the easy crush I had on him in the past, but different. So, so different.❞

But the characters’ development was what I really liked about them. Both of these people have flaws, but it was amazing to see how these flaws changed over time. Both Vanessa and Aiden change significantly from the beginning to the end of the book. But underneath it all, they continue to be the same people. In other words, they don’t change into these strange characters; rather, they just improve upon one another. 

Everything is slow to build in this book. The brownie points are you are never bored, although the book is very lengthy but you are filled with love, laughter, confessions, insecurities and one hell of dialogues. Despite the fact that The Wall of Winnipeg And Me is unmistakably a sports romance novel, I firmly believe that it is a book for readers of all backgrounds and tastes due to its authenticity, honesty, and the natural rather than forced connection between the characters.

❝Home is where you are. I would go anywhere for you if you wanted me to be there.❞

I am so in love with this book, I can’t shut up ever. Have you read the book!