BEYOND BASEBALL by Carie Lawson

I knew when I started reading this book it would be good, because I have read the first three in this series by Carie Lawson and they were all a "home run". This one did not disappoint me. Jude McCord is a baseball player with an injury he is recovering from and finds himself taking on the job as a police officer while his shoulder heals. He first meets up with Isabelle Winters when he pulls her over for speeding. He later finds out she is his long time friend and partner's grand-daughter, who he doesn't think very highly of. Which is okay because she doesn't think very highly of him at first. But they end up working together on Jude's dream of building a baseball camp to help teach kids the basics, and learning that both of them were wrong in their initial opinion of each other.

I wish there could be more men out there like Jude McCord. He was a man with a personality that drew people to him, a person with respect and love for his elders, who didn't think more highly of himself that he ought to think, who had personal convictions and stood by them even when it would have been easy to give in to the moment. I just thought he was a "knight in shining armor" in this story. The way Isabelle grew to understand and know him was fun and endearing and I just enjoyed myself all the way through the book. This is just a great series and I say "well done!" to Carie Lawson. You can read this book by itself, but I must encourage you to read the whole series because you will fall in love with the rest of the McCord family.