5 SMOOCHES!
SYNOPSIS:
Hands down, my favorite thing in the world is to score. Touchdowns.
Don’t let the fact that I’m the leading pick in the Most Valuable Playboy charity auction fool you. These days, I’m only a player on the field. I’ve kept my pants zipped all season long — and it has been long — because nothing’s more important than leading my team to victory every week. Except maybe escaping from the team owner’s recently-widowed and handsy-as-hell sister who’s dead set on winning more than a date with me.
Enter Violet and a well-placed Hail Mary.
She’s my best friend’s sister with a smile as sweet as cherry pie and a mind that runs quicker than the 40-yard-dash. After Violet saves the day with the highest bid, I don’t even give her a two-minute warning before I kiss her in front of the whole crowd and then announce that she’s my girlfriend. Which would be fine except my agent tells me we’ve got to keep up the act while he’s negotiating my contract.
Violet takes one for the team and pretends to be mine, but our boyfriend-girlfriend scrimmage quickly turns into a full contact sport, and I want it to go into overtime. The problem is — I’ve been riding the bench for years.
How can a guy like me, who finally has a chance to prove his worth on the field, convince the girl she’s most valuable to his heart?
MOST VALUABLE PLAYBOY is a brand new standalone sports romance written in the guy’s POV!
REVIEW:
There hasn’t been a single book written by Lauren Blakely that I’ve read that I haven’t loved. In my opinion, she’s one of the great contemporary romance authors. Romantic storytelling is this woman’s gift, that much is clear, but it is the genuine and authentic way in which she delivers an entirely male point-of-view story that never fails to impress me. I don’t know how she pulls it off, where she gets this incredible insight, but it is unique to Blakely and something that makes her writing truly special. So, if you haven’t read one of her books, well, you’re seriously missing out. It’s an easy fix, though, and a great place to start would be right here with this book, Most Valuable Playboy.
“The quarterback and the hometown girl… The baller and the babe.”
While I enjoy a good sports romance, I’ll be honest, they aren’t one of my top favorite tropes. Blakely’s written two football romcoms – this one and Out of Bounds – that have not only become favorites of mine but have left me pining for more. Two of my favorite tropes, though, are a big brother’s best friend and friends-to-lovers, and Blakely’s blending of both tropes here was fantastic.
“She has to feel it, too. She has to know. She has to get it…This is two people meant to be together.”
Most Valuable Playboy was no quarterback bags the cheerleader story. This was a very sweet, unexpected romance between a guy who happens to be a quarterback and a female friend since childhood, who also happens to be the younger sister of his best friend. Cooper and Violet grew up together and had their own comfortable, easy friendship, though, and that formed a solid foundation for this pairing. A favor takes on a life of its own, and from it some undeniable chemistry and repressed feelings surge to the surface that neither had anticipated but both were unable to fight. Cooper was driven, focused, determined and confident, both on the field and in his pursuit of Violet. It was mesmerizing, and I was right there with her – weak-kneed, hammering heart and happily sighing – when he turned on the swoon.
“I think when you’ve been in love with someone your whole life, it’s just hard to imagine you’d be so lucky that he’d love you back.”
A Blakely romance isn’t one filled with pain, angst or drama–it’s the flipside of the coin. She pens love stories that are, cover-to-cover, an absolute pleasure to read. The kinds of books that you’re happy to start and that make you happier the more you read. That’s exactly what kind of book she gives her readers here in Most Valuable Playboy. I couldn’t help but cheer for the quarterback and the hometown girl.
I just didn’t want to put this book down. I devoured it with the kind of single-minded focus where you forget to eat, sleep or do pretty much anything but read the words on the page. I was completely caught up in Cooper and Violet’s love story, and I loved every single minute of it. Five smooches from me for Lauren Blakely’s Most Valuable Playboy!
~ Danielle Palumbo
