5 Smooches!
Synopsis
A troubled Scottish rugby player who doesn’t play by the rules.
A vivacious man-eater who’s given up on love.
When it comes to Lachlan and Kayla, opposites don’t just attract – they explode.
Kayla Moore has always been comfortable with her feisty, maneating reputation. At least it was fine until she hit her thirties and saw her best friends Stephanie and Nicola settle down with Linden and Bram McGregor, leaving Kayla to be the odd one out. Tired of being the third wheel with nothing but one-night stands and dead-end dates in San Francisco, Kayla decides to take a vow of celibacy and put men on the backburner.
That is until she lays her eyes on Linden and Bram’s cousin, hot Scot Lachlan McGregor. Lachlan is her sexual fantasy come to life – tall, tatted, and built like a Mack truck. With a steely gaze and successful rugby career back in Edinburgh, he’s the kind of man that makes her want to throw her vow right out the window. But Lachlan’s quiet and intense demeanor makes him a hard man to get to know, let alone get close to.
It isn’t until the two of them are thrown together one long, unforgettable night that Kayla realizes there is so much more to this brooding macho man than what meets the eye. But even with sparks flying between the two, Lachlan can’t stay in America forever. Now, Kayla has to decide whether to uproot her whole life and chance it all on someone she barely knows or risk getting burned once again.
Sometimes love is a game that just needs to be played.
Amie’s Review
I pretty much devour all of Karina Halle’s books. They just speak to me. Her writing is always good and clean without being over the top pretentious and hard to follow. Now I adore her travel romances as well as her lighter romances. I would consider The Pact and The Offer Karina Halle light and I loved them for a really good fun beach read and while you do not have to read The Pact and The Offer before reading The Play, I would recommend it. They are all considered standalones and feature a different couple but the are all loosely related and feature a lot of the same characters. So back to this group of books being “light reads”. I feel like Karina tricked me this time. Because I started the first few pages of this book and was literally bawling my eyes out. All I could think was is that I couldn’t do this for the next million pages. I mean this book is pretty long and she was already ripping my heart out with Lachlan’s childhood.
“I love you. But I just can’t have you in my life. I’m so sorry.”
I put this book down in a huff the first few pages. It was just so hard to read. I mean, I was all like what happened to hot hilarious Scottish helicopter pilots and Bram-a-lam-a-ding-dong. I didn’t expect this kind of emotion right away and I was a little upset with Karina but then I pushed through and while this story is a terribly emotional one that deals with some very sensitive subjects it was broken up brilliantly with the radiant, take charge, and quite hilarious character that is Kayla Moore.
‘“We should get coffee this week. If you want, that is.”
“Coffee would be great,” I say. Dick would be better, though.’
Kayla is the exact antithesis of Lachlan and she was a breath of fresh air. She was the outgoing to his recluse, the yin to his yang most of the book and she balanced him so beautifully and made this really gut wrenching story so much more bearable with her humor and vibrancy. She made me smile when Lach had me in tears and I just adored her character so much. Now, that isn’t to say that I didn’t love Lach. With time he became my very favorite of the men in these books. His quite calm and bluntness drew me in right away but then when he loves it’s so special. It was like all the stars in the sky came on and he completely lit this book up!
“I’m so in love with you,”
“So in love. There is no bottom. I just keep falling.”
Now, I know I have said that this book is hella long and it is but it did not feel that way at all. You see, Lachlan and Kayla’s relationship is so fast moving and very very intense that the book seemed to blur by as I devoured it.
“I already miss you and you’re still here.”
The intensity and holy moly, all of that glorious sex kept the book moving right along. Kayla and Lach are both quite inventive and experimental when it comes to sex and these two definitely beat out Steph and Linden and Bram and Nicola in the sexy time department because this book was ridiculously sensual. Whew!
‘Getting spanked and fucked in the locker room of a rugby star? Yeah. I’m not going to forget this either.’
I absolutely love being proven wrong about what I think I want in a book and Karina managed to do that. I didn’t think I wanted Lachlan and Kayla’s journey to be so long and hard but man was it fantastic and amazing to go on that arduous trek with them. So, thank you Karina for making me feel. Thank you for proving me wrong and giving the me the experience of love that isn’t conditional and is hard won. What a brilliant book and also my absolute favorite in the series. It is the sweetest, the sexiest, and the most emotive. I will definitely pick this one up again and again.
“I can see your cracks and your darkness and your flaws and I fall in love with it all. And I hope you can fall in love with everything that I am, all that lurks in my dark, all that shines in my light. I want you to love every little piece of me, because it all belongs to you.”
~Amie
Miranda’s Review
Opening this book and looking at the large number under locations left a daunting feeling in my heart. I couldn’t wrap my head around what could possibly happen in this book to warrant it being so much longer than The Pact and The Offer. But having finished let me tell you every scene, every page, and every word is not only needed but beautiful and poignant and completely necessary.
“He’s so beautiful to look at it almost hurts. It does hurt.”
Can we talk about how incredibly much I adored Lachlan and Kayla. For his part, Lachlan completely took me by surprise. His story is one filled with sadness and disappointment and I will be honest it had me tearing up over and over again. For such a strong and sexy man he is so broken and hopeless. Kayla’s internal dialogue constantly had me smiling and completely helped to break up the struggle that Lachlan dealt with the majority of the book. It was refreshing to see this large rugby player who on the field and with his charity has his life together but on a personal level he was shut down. And then he meets Kayla and while sparks flew it was also at time a slow burn relationship on a deeper lever. For her opening up was worth it and he truly makes an effort. But old habits die hard and demons never truly go away.
“There isn’t always a happily ever after. The prince can seem more like the villain at times but . . .then again, so can the princess.”
Karina Halle is just one of those authors that can not only make you feel she can make you laugh and on top of it all, she has this amazing ability to take you to another place and make you believe you have been there. Wile hard at times, The Play was an absolute joy to read and I am already considering re-reading the entire series again just so I can relive it, even for one more moment.
~miranda
