Rating: ★★★ +.5 | Playbook #1 | 308 pages | Berkley | Contemporary | 9/11/2018
When Marlee Harper catches her NFL wide receiver boyfriend cheating she calls it quits on the whole “football girlfriend” life to do bad all by herself. Unfortunately, she can’t fight her attraction to the team’s enticing new quarterback, Gavin Pope. But how can she be with Gavin when it means going back to the role she triumphantly walked away from?
I liked a lot about this book. Martin’s writing really works for me. It skews a nice line between women’s fiction and contemporary romance. Marlee’s 1st person POV is snappy, fast-paced cheeky and is easy to sink into. Although, there were times when I wished she would take the quippy-ness down a notch–particularly the parts where Marlee is constantly talking in hashtags.
The thing that bugged me the most about this book is all the mean girl drama between Marlee and the football wives. So much of the book is grown women acting like clique-y high schoolers because of a man. Every other scene I’d be like:
The audiobook narrator, January LaVoy, is excellent and I hope she gets to do the whole series because I would listen to it just for her. Her Marlee voice reminded me a lot of the actress Amber West (who I totally imagined as Marlee). Each one of January’s voices is on point and her ability to code switch depending on the character’s race is uncanny.
