What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate…no matter how hard that makes things.
GENRE:
New Adult, Romance
PAGES:
422 pages
PART OF A SERIES?:
the 3rd in the Briar U series
RELEASE DATE:
October 7th, 2019
PUBLISHER:
Elle Kennedy Inc
SOURCE:
Ebook
YOU CAN PRE-ORDER THE BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE/LIBRARY OR THE FOLLOWING LINKS:
Audible – Not Up Yet but should be in the future!
GOODREADS SUMMARY:
What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate…no matter how hard that makes things.
But there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t be friends with a woman. And I won’t lie—my new classmate Demi Davis is one cool chick. Her smart mouth is hot as hell, and so is the rest of her, but the fact that she’s got a boyfriend eliminates the temptation to touch her.
Except three months into our friendship, Demi is single and looking for a rebound.
And she’s making a play for me.
Avoiding her is impossible. We’re paired up on a yearlong school project, but I’m confident I can resist her. We’d never work, anyway. Our backgrounds are too different, our goals aren’t aligned, and her parents hate my guts.
Hooking up is a very bad idea. Now I just have to convince my body—and my heart.
MY REVIEW
Elle Kennedy always brings the wonderful boys of Briar U right when I need it. I had totally forgotten that The Play was coming out until the night before when it downloaded onto my Kindle app – then I stayed up until about 2 am reading the entire boo because I just can’t resist a good romance from Elle. She’s one of my favorites because she’s all my favorites from NA – romance, college, sports.
Hunter felt super unlikable in previous novels – I just couldn’t get behind him. To be fair, the most we get of him is in Summer’s book and Summer and Fitz weren’t exactly super kind to him so I understand. But I think because I love Summer and Fitz so well together, it was hard to feel for Hunter. Then in the next book, he (unknowingly) hooks up with a rival player’s girlfriend and gets his wrist broken, when he’s a major part of the team. It just was kind of hard to feel bad for him.
But The Play really made you love him. He’s not my favorite Harkness boy but I definitely adore him a lot now that I’ve been in his head. The fact that he realized his playboy ways had an effect not only on himself but on his friends, on his team, was a really mature thing to do and while the forced celibacy was just hilarious, it was still kind of awesome to see him step up, take responsibility for his actions and be a captain. I really loved that – it made him seem like an even better fit for Demi and I think that’s even why she ended up liking him more.
Honestly though, I think Demi is the real heart and center of the novel. First off, I love that she is a woman of color – my god we need more of those in romance, in books in general – and that she was biracial on top of that. I am biracial as well – half white, half mexican – so I super appreciate a biracial character – I always feel so connected to them. But I just loved her as a person. She was strong and confident the entire time and I really loved that. Even when she breaks up with her boyfriend of SO many years, she’s so strong and she works so hard to move forward. I love her confidence in her sexuality and I really love that she had the confidence and bravery to reach for the career path she wanted, not what everyone else wanted.
The two characters have a really great friendship and I love friendships that blossom into relationships (says the girl who fell in love with her best friend and has been dating him for nearly 3 years now!). I just think that the build up is great, its a slow burn that just leaves you absolutely PANTING for more. Their chemistry is hot as hell and I’m almost glad my boyfriend was asleep while I was reading it so he didn’t see my face all red and hot haha!
There was one small part I wasn’t a huge fan of – a friendship between Demi and a guy friend of hers. I just…I wasn’t a fan of it and even though the culmination of what happened with that friendship is a serious situation and worthy of conversation, I just wasn’t a fan of the build up at all. That was probably my only dislike and it didn’t ruin the novel as a whole.
I think my favorite part of the book was the egg though. I won’t say more than that because no spoilers but oh my god, that egg was hilarious as hell. I am still laughing my ass about it.
RATING:
4 out of 5 Stars
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