Book Review: The Play by Elle Kennedy

The Play (Briar U #3)

Pages: 422
Publish date: October 7th, 2019
Publisher: –
ASIN: B07NF2BDFZ
Purchase: Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU

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.

The Play:

I received an e-arc of The Play in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way influenced my thoughts and feelings about the book.

I’m not going to lie here, but this is probably my least favourite Elle Kennedy book – and that is really hard to say. In the past, I’ve really enjoyed most of her books, but there was something about The Play that I just couldn’t love.

The Play by Elle Kennedy follows protagonists Hunter Davenport and Demi Davis as they try and navigate a new year at college. Last year distractions cost the ice hockey team their whole season. Now as captain he knows that he has to redeem everything that happened the year before. So he has a plan and that is to focus on hockey and not on women. But all his plans are out the window when he meets Demi. But she has a boyfriend, so everything is going well until they break up and she is looking for a rebound.

Samantha Gades

I really wanted to like The Play, but I just couldn’t get it into like Elle Kennedy’s other novels. It was a combination of reasons that made me like this book less than all her others.

I didn’t have much of a problem with the protagonists, other than the fact that I felt a distance from them. I couldn’t really connect with them at all. Hunter was really interesting to me. Throughout the Briar U series, especially at the start I really enjoyed getting to know him, but as the novels went on and his attitude changed – understandably. I couldn’t like him as much as I wanted too. He acted like a 2-year-old and that just put me off. So being in his head, while he gets over most of the issues, wasn’t the best. It was hard for me to like Hunter like other male protagonists and that really put a sour note on the book for me.

I didn’t have any problems with Demi, but I just could not connect with her. I really wanted to like her, but there was something that was holding me back. Saying this I really enjoyed Demi as a character, she was interesting and engaging. But I couldn’t love her as a protagonist. She just didn’t feel real for me. I felt that she was just someone on a page and really nothing more. I felt very similar about Hunter as well.

Green Chameleon

Because of not being able to connect with characters, it made it really hard to love the romance. While everything was believable, I wasn’t begging them to get together. And while I enjoyed Hunter and Demi together, again I just felt very separated from it all and wasn’t able to connect with it. In saying this, I did find it adorable and I did like them together. I felt like they fit one another and they really worked well together.

One of the things that I did like about the romance was that they started out as friends. That is always something that I love having in my romance books. It just makes everything more relatable and real.

Another problem that I had with The Play, was that it was too long. It was over 400 pages, and for a romance book, that took some out of me. I love long books, but I feel that romance books that exceed that 350 mark, takes a lot out of the reader. I kept on wondering when the book was going to end. Because of all this, it made reading the book less enjoyable.

Alejandra Quiroz

The Play by Elle Kennedy was okay. I didn’t hate it by any means. But compared to her other books, this is very low on my list. I really wanted to like it, but I was just left disappointed. I think if I hadn’t read many of Elle Kennedy’s books before, I wouldn’t feel the way I do. But I really do enjoy Elle Kennedy’s books.

Overall, The Play was okay. I really wish that I could have liked it more, but it was a miss for me. I wasn’t able to connect with both protagonists as I would have normally liked. And this made it hard for me to like the romance. I just felt like there was something missing. It was an okay addition to the series and Elle Kennedy’s world and I did like reading it. Hopefully, I will love Elle Kennedy’s book a lot more.