Playing Hard to Get

The Players, Book 1

By: Monica Murphy

Narrated by: Rock Engle, Meg Sylvan

Knox Maguire is the king of our college campus, the star offensive tight end on the football team.

He is the complete opposite of me in every way. I'm quiet. He's loud. I'm shy. He's definitely not. Everyone loves him. No one knows me.

Fresh out of a breakup, I don't really trust him, and why should I? Knox is the ultimate player. When I become his English tutor, I tell myself we need to keep things between us strictly business. Watching my mother deal with my ex-athlete father long ago taught me to stay far away from that type of man.

Yet Knox is impossible to resist. Next thing I know, we're getting hot and heavy in the library—and that was never part of the plan. When Knox admits he can't stop thinking about me, I have a realization: I can't stop thinking about him either.

Instead of keeping my distance, I pull him in closer. Until somehow, we're spending all of our time together, and I find myself falling for Knox. Hard.

Will this actually work between us? Or am I getting played?

©2023 Monica Murphy (P)2023 Podium Audio

distracting

the story is good. But why is a very punctual 70 year old man reading the part of a college student? It's pretty distracting and hard to buy.

Mid

This is a safe read. No drama, no angst, no real plot, no break up. It’s a ‘tutor-girl/football campus celebrity’ trope with zero surprises. The main characters (Joanna and Knox) are neutral and mostly likeable. Other than having an active sex life before Joanna, once Knox is in he's all in, a cinnamon roll. Joanna is not a virgin. But she started to bring me down with all of her bad-ex-boyfriend mentions. Isn’t it funny that in these books a guy can have a thousand women and still be a happy-go-lucky and a woman has ONE partner and he almost destroys her for all others.

Things that were mentioned in this book that made me groan in pain and snapped my vag shut:

- mfc has a ‘fück the patriarchy’ tattoo 🙄😫
- this book mentions Taylor Swift 🤮
- this book mentions how we all suffered during covid 🤨
- there’s a whole segment where the MCs discuss a romance book and promote Audible by name 🤬
I find that kind of self promotion both tacky and gross. I’m not paying for a commercial, and I don't want to be reminded that the romance genre is actually a greedy business pretending to be one of the girls

amazing

This book is so good I love it so much can't wait to read more of these books

College Sports Romance

This was my first Monica Murphy read. I really enjoyed this book. I love college and sports romance especially football. I liked her being his tutor, I always think that's a good trope for college romance. There was a couple moments I felt like maybe things moved a bit quick and maybe they needed to prove themselves more but that's also college romance sometimes I believe. definitely didn't keep me from liking it. I actually couldn't stop listening, I kept wanting to listen every chance I got.

No 3rd act break up

I am not a fan of the minimum word requirement in reviews. The audio wasn’t good… I think I would have enjoyed it more but I just didn’t feel any emotion from the male narrator and so the performance feel flat.