Trick Play (Lili’s Review)

Title: Trick Play (Eastshore Tigers #3)
Author: Alison Hendricks
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: September 14th 2016
Genre(s): Contemporary
Page Count: 148 pages
Reviewed by: Lili
Heat Level: 3 flames out of 5
Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5
Blurb:

Luke Trent is desperate to bring his team back together. If the Tigers can’t get over their slump, he’ll never make it to the pros. With the LGBT-inclusive ‘Rainbow Tigers’ mania dying down, it’ll take a crazy scheme to restore their former glory, and Luke has the perfect one in mind: Dating his best friend.

Brandon Tucker has secretly been in love with Luke for years. He knows he’s going to get hurt if he agrees to a pretend relationship with his very straight friend, but he can’t help it. This is as close as he’ll ever get to the real thing.

The strength of their friendship makes their lie an easy sell, and things are looking up for the Tigers. But when Luke kisses him in front of the whole team, Brandon can’t help but wonder if the only man he’s ever wanted might actually want him back.

With the fire of their fake romance beginning to burn true, a teammate’s devastating betrayal forces them to make a difficult choice: Sacrifice their relationship to save their career, or give up everything else for the chance at a once-in-a-lifetime love.

Going into Trick Play by Alison Hendricks I was all kinds of excited.
I love sports romance and add best friends to lovers- this should’ve been a slam-dunk. Unfortunately, this book suffered from “Too Short Syndrome.” Because the book wasn’t that long, it didn’t allow for the plot to seem plausible. I didn’t buy into:

1. The story. Straight best friend suggests a fake relationship to his (unknowingly) gay best friend- kisses his (unknowingly) gay best friend and just quickly falls into a relationship with him. He questioned his sexuality for maybe five seconds. Sorry, best friend or not I know from experience there’s lots of confusion that goes on in your head in a situation like that. That bit got resolved too quickly in his mind. Plus, where was that delicious sexual tension build up you read about in fake boyfriend stories? It was non-existent here.:(

2. The conflict at the end with one of the character’s dad. His father went from almost ballistic to magically ok with everything. It just quickly resolved- again.

3. Then there was the punishment administered by the NCAA. Sigh… it just seemed so out there.

I couldn’t buy what the author was selling me. I needed more story. And then:

4. There was also some editing issues-wrong name used, a few typos; there was also a small inconsistency with the clothes one of them was wearing at the beginning of the sex scene compared to later on in the scene.

I don’t know, this author has a lot of potentials, and I would give her another chance, but I need to see more next time. She’s got it in her- I know it! She’s got all the components! This book though only gets 2.5 Stars from me.