I really enjoyed this book - I stayed up until 2am to finish it and had tears in my eyes at one point. Signs to me that I am reading a good book. Trust me, normally when someone is crying during a movie or tells me I will cry in a book, I roll my eyes. Most times I find that an author or movie is trying too hard to pull the emotion out of me. So if I do find myself crying, I genuinely feel that there is true emotion in the book. It took me awhile to warm up to Sam, he was a very absentee and uninterested father for the first 5 years of Connor's life. But Rachel Gibson was able to make the character of Sam work for me and become more likable. Autumn seemed to be the stereotypical single mother - strong, resilient, yet vulnerable and still working through the rejection of Sam. I think my favourite scene in the book was with Sam, Connor, and Autumn when Sam discovers Autumn wearing a Sidney Crosby Penguins jersey.
I have read other reviews saying that this book is very similar to Gibson's Simply Irresistible and I agree. But unlike some, I do not have a problem with this. Simply Irresistible is one of my all-time favourite books and there are enough differences between the two so that Any Man of Mine is not a carbon copy. I am hoping that there will be a long line of hockey books from Rachel Gibson because one can never have enough Canadian hockey heroes!
