Release Day Review: The Play (Briar U #3) by Elle Kennedy

 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 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.

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What I thought about The Play

The Play picks up with Hunter Davenport a few months into his self-enforced celibacy.  He's focused on hockey and redeeming his team's performance that kept them out of the playoff last season. He's committed to staying away from sex until he has his redemption.

When Hunter is assigned a class project with Demi Davis, he's relieved that she has a boyfriend.  It will keep the time they have to spend together on their project strictly in the "friend zone". And that is exactly what happens.  Hunter and Demi develop quite a nice friendship while working on their class project -- that is until Demi and her boyfriend break up and she's suddenly available. When Demi decides she wants Hunter as her rebound, his celibacy is challenged in a major way.

I loved these two together, most especially the building of their relationship from a solid friendship to something more. I think that was my favorite part of The Play -- how their friendship gradually progressed.  It was also very cute how the guys all saw what was going on, even though Hunter was determined to stay celibate.  I also liked how Demi was able to get Hunter to vocalize what he wanted after college, and why that was a potential problem for him. The very open and honest discussion of sex was also a big plus for me in this book.

Overall, I devoured this book in less than 48 hours.  Elle Kennedy's writing creates such a wonderful reading experience that I just didn't want to stop until I got to the end. Hunter is terrific and Demi is terrific for him and even though this book starts out as a friendship, there are plenty of sexy times available between the pages. There's plenty of Summer, Brenna and the old gang from the Off-Campus series too, which I really appreciated.  Loved it all!

An ARC was provided for review.   

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Haven’t read book 1 of Briar U?

Find out more about THE CHASE (currently on sale for 99 cents) here: http://bit.ly/2N75k1e 

and THE RISK (Briar U, book 2) here:

https://www.ellekennedy.com/books/the-risk/  

Follow Elle Kennedy on Amazon: http://geni.us/EKAmz
Follow Elle Kennedy on Bookbub: http://bit.ly/2wCUsSx

    

Cover Reveal:The Play by Karina Halle

A troubled Scottish rugby player who doesn't play by the rules.
A vivacious man-eater who's given up on love.
When it comes to Lachlan and Kayla, opposites don't just attract - they explode.

Kayla Moore has always been comfortable with her feisty, maneating reputation. At least it was fine until she hit her thirties and saw her best friends Stephanie and Nicola settle down with Linden and Bram McGregor, leaving Kayla to be the odd one out. Tired of being the third wheel with nothing but one-night stands and dead-end dates in San Francisco, Kayla decides to take a vow of celibacy and put men on the backburner.

That is until she lays her eyes on Linden and Bram’s cousin, hot Scot Lachlan McGregor. Lachlan is her sexual fantasy come to life – tall, tatted, and built like a Mack truck. With a steely gaze and successful rugby career back in Edinburgh, he’s the kind of man that makes her want to throw her vow right out the window. But Lachlan’s quiet and intense demeanor makes him a hard man to get to know, let alone get close to.

It isn’t until the two of them are thrown together one long, unforgettable night that Kayla realizes there is so much more to this brooding macho man than what meets the eye. But even with sparks flying between the two, Lachlan can’t stay in America forever. Now, Kayla has to decide whether to uproot her whole life and chance it all on someone she barely knows or risk getting burned once again.
Sometimes love is a game that just needs to be played.

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AMAZON  ***   AMAZON UK  *** AMAZON AU

Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of Where Sea Meets Sky, Racing the Sun, The Pact, Love, in English, The Artists Trilogy, Dirty Angels and over 20 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.

Halle is represented by the Waxman Leavell Agency and is both self-published and published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK.

Hit her up on Instagram at @authorHalle , on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook. You can also visit www.authorkarinahalle.com  and sign up for the newsletter for news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more.

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