Carole´s Monday. Playing Hard to get

 

Author: Monica Murphy

Narrator: Rock Engle & Meg Sylvan

Title: Playing Hard to Get

Series: The Players #1

Genre: Sports Romance, Contemporary Romance, New Adult

Format: Audiobook 

Published: December 1, 2022

Where I Got It: My shelf (Audible)

Summary: 

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?

Review:

I was looking for a football romance since football season was on the way! 

Here we follow Knox, our resident football player, and Joanna, our resident book nerd and tutor. They couldn't more different, but they start bounding as Joanna helps Knox with his reading. Knox has dyslexia, and he's put off his English class for as long as possible, but he needs it to graduate college. Joanna is still working on her broken heart and Knox has a bet to not have sex until after the season is over. However, lust and love can't be stopped sometimes. 

This was a very sweet story. Yes, there is spice, but this was relatively low-key drama. Yes, there is a smidge, but nothing over-the-top or wasn't fixed after TALKING. I liked it!

I liked Joanna, and I did warm up to Knox. Knox was kinda annoying, but I did warm up to him especially when you could see him fall in love. It was sweet. 

My only issue was the Joanna has issues with football because of her dad being a footballer who abandoned her family. I feel like that lil factoid was breezed over. I think we needed some more time to dive into that and maybe….get a resolution? IDK. Maybe we’ll see something in book 2?

I am curious about book 2 because I feel like that will rock many boats, and I'm curious how Knox will react. Mmmmm I may have to download it. 

The narrators were good. They did well. 

But yes, this was very sweet and made me excited for Fall and football. I liked the low-key drama....it was fitting. I just really liked them talking, falling in love, and the spice was spread out enough not to be too much. It was nice. I think I needed something low-key in my life right now. Life has been lifing. 

4 stars. 

Reading Challenges

- Audiobook #37

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Format: 352 pages, Paperback

Published: June 25, 2026 by FABER AND FABER

Fiction/library

This one was not as good as my sister the serial killer. It was good, but I think the constant jump between everyone kind of took something away.

Eniiyi is the main character, but so is also a lot of others. She is part of a cursed line of women. She is also the spitting image of her aunt who died before she was born.

And everyone is cursed to have bad luck with men. All try, and all come back to the family house. We get to see many failed relationships, and one is the aunt.

Kind of sad to see everyone fail at love. Eniiyi is trying, but sometimes you just fall into patterns even if there is no curse. And who knows, maybe there really was a curse.

I still liked it, the end brought some twists. But again, no real closure.

No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace... So goes the family curse, handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts as it goes. And now it's calm, rational Eniiyi's turn - who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, and her family's insistence that she must be a reincarnation, has long been used to some strange familial beliefs.

Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family's history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?

Audio: Better Luck next time by Cara Bastone

By: Cara Bastone

Narrated by: Mae Whitman, Colin Woodell, Josh Hurley, Cary Hite, Daniel Henning, Rebecca Stern, Richard Poe, Maria McCann, Art Brown, Petey Gibson, Tim Lounibos

Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins

Release date: 05-15-25

Publisher: Audible Originals

Contemporary romance

Oh another wormhole book! I did not realise!

Yup those pesky wormholes and two former besties end up in one. Then they are stuck in an alternate reality, snowed in , in a cabin with both their families.

These two has some unresolved issues. It was also obvious they fancied each other but had never made a move.

It was short and good and it all works out. I like Bastone´s novellas.

Mona and Duncan used to be best friends. Now they can’t stand each other. Too bad that’s not a good enough excuse to miss their two families’ annual trip to the cabin. But things get really complicated when they accidentally drive through a wormhole together on the way. Look what playing nice and carpooling gets you.

Now they’re stranded indoors by an epic storm and stuck in an alternate timeline where things are just slightly ... off. Duncan and his dad aren’t speaking for reasons no one knows, Mona’s mom doesn’t like her hair or her career choices, and their siblings are meddlesome as ever.

Oh, yeah, and apparently they're going through a divorce. Which means that in this universe they are married. To each other.

All they can really do is play along until they figure out how to get back to the real timeline. How hard can it be—they already hate each other, don’t they? But figuring out how exactly Mona and Duncan managed to fall epically in love with one another—and then break each other’s hearts—is easier said than done. Navigating all these big feelings is leading to new ones, but are they destined to hurt each other in any universe? And what happens to this new relationship when they’re back to their old lives?

Audio: First sign of Danger by Kelley Armstrong

By: Kelley Armstrong

Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer

Series: Haven's Rock, Book 4

Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins

Release date: 02-17-26

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Thriller/audible

Casey and Eric is out hiking with their child when they come across hikers. Way to close to to Haven´s rock. What is going on?

And then there is the mining camp. They have already had issues with miners coming to close.

The stakes are high as always. Someone is dead, as always. And for once there is some closure, some sense of peace. At the end of this book they might have peace for a while.

Intense and good. Good narration. This was my first audiobook

Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are entering a new chapter of life as parents to their six-month-old baby. Their family is hidden away in the sanctuary town of Haven's Rock where they can live safe and private lives. But when they encounter hikers too close to the borders of Haven's Rock, they realize they're in danger of being exposed.

When they find one of the hikers dead the next day, they realize that their paranoia was justified, but they're no closer to finding out who these people were and what they were doing in the vicinity of Haven's Rock. Only by tracing the hikers' movements, as well as examining the recent behavior of their closest neighbors, the workers of a secretive mining camp, will they be able to figure out where the threat is coming from and shut it down. Otherwise, the lives of everyone in Haven's Rock--and their safe, secure new existence--are at risk.