THE PLAY
Series: Briar U #3
Genre: New Adult, Sports Romance
Author: Elle Kennedy
Release Date: October 7, 2019
A brand-new standalone novel in the New York Times bestselling Briar U series!
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 friendswith 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.
You’re a fun date.” “This isn’t a date.” She tips her head in challenge.
“Then why are you giving me the Penis Eyes?”
“I’m not.”
“I know Penis Eyes when I see ’em.”
Elle Kennedy knows how to hit the spot just right when it comes to her addictive NA Sports romance. She’s able to combine quirky humor with deliciously steamy romance and create page-turning books that seems to get better with each new one in this series. I know I said this when I finished the The Risk, but I really mean it now when I say that this was my favorite in the series!
Hunter has been a character that’s been on my radar since The Chase. My heart went out for the guy after he lost the girl he was interested in to his buddy who swore up and down that he wasn’t interested in her. We got to see Hunter spiral from that let down and turn into a quite an indiscriminate manwhore. The guy went through a stage where any woman that looked his way was game, and it almost cost him more than he bargained for. Now he’s determined to rid himself of temptation by saying no to sex. Sex is what got him in trouble so sex is what he’ll cut out. The answer? Celibacy. The problem? It’s easier said than done.
When Demi and Hunter first meet in class, Demi thinks he’s just like every other hot jock; vapid and vain. But when an assignment together forces them together, she soon discovers that there’s many more layers to Hunter than meet the eye. He’s sweet, funny, and soon becomes a friend and confidant. So who better to turn to when she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her and needs a rebound to move on? Her new buddy, of course. Unfortunately Hunter is a lot more stubborn when it comes to his celibacy that she thought.
This was such a fun story. I love a strong and confident heroine, and Demi was definitely that. She’s sassy, with a fiery temper, and a super sharp mind. I couldn’t help but like her immediately. This is not a girl that plays game or doesn’t speak her mind. She says what she means and she means what she says. You can’t help but appreciate that. Hunter was wonderfully multi-layered. You get to peel back the layers and truly see what makes him tick, and when you begin to get to the true depths of him, you can’t help but love the guy. There’s just something so wonderfully endearing about him. I think I loved the friendship between him and Demi almost as much as their budding romance. I loved that Demi wasn’t afraid to push his buttons to get what she wanted but she didn’t play games with him either. She’s extremely straight forward in what she wants.
The romance was a perfectly paced slow burn. These two start off as friends with fiery chemistry and it soon turns into something neither of them saw coming. I loved seeing the gang from the previous books and catching up with Garrett, Dean and Logan. Then there’s my favorite crazy duo, Hollis and Rupi, and all of the other wonderful secondary characters. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we get Connor’s book next. I seriously can’t get enough of this series!
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