Play by Kylie Scott

Mal Ericson, drummer for the world famous rock band Stage Dive, needs to clean up his image fast—at least for a little while. Having a good girl on his arm should do the job just fine. Mal doesn’t plan on this temporary fix becoming permanent, but he didn’t count on finding the one right girl.

Anne Rollins never thought she’d ever meet the rock god who plastered her teenage bedroom walls—especially not under these circumstances. Anne has money problems. Big ones. But being paid to play the pretend girlfriend to a wild life-of-the-party drummer couldn’t end well. No matter how hot he is. Or could it?

Kylie Scott returns with the highly anticipated follow-up to international bestseller LICK.

I don’t know what happened guys. Maybe I rushed into grabbing Play? Maybe I shouldn’t have picked it up “right” after finishing Lick. Or maybe, it just wasn’t as good as I was hoping.

While Play did have a cool set of characters it just wasn’t as good as Lick. I know it’s not fair to compare the two especially since the storyline is totally different as well as the characters but I couldn’t help looking at Mal and Anne (more on that in a bit) and comparing them to David and Ev. Does this make me a horrible reviewer? I honestly have no clue.

Anywho Play is Mal’s (the super hot drummer of Stage Dive) story of love and struggle and all kinds of fabulous sex. Seriously. The sex in this book was…well um…yes. Mal, for “reasons” needs a fake girlfriend; and in walks Anne. I loved how Anne truly was a doormat but somehow Mal made her begin to stand up for herself and set boundaries with the people in her life. In fact this tidbit alone is worthy of 2 stars to me. Something about seeing a relationship where both parties are built up and encouraged in a way that’s not all about codependency or living in a perfect bubble where other people’s doubts can’t reach you is just so refreshing necessary in books. I’m tired of reading about the super sexy MMA fighter who is the Earth , moon and stars of Walking Vagina A, and without him she can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can BE! I’m over the nonstop conflict and back and forths just because that’s what’s expected in books. Scott has taken a subject (über hot rock stars finding “the one”) and giving a cool new spin on it. Gone are the days where we had to read 20 chapters of inner monologuing and nonstop bickering caused by inconsequential jealousy or overly complicated and totally unnecessary back story! And that’s not to say that Mal & Anne didn’t have their fights. Every couple does. But the way Scott handled these fights and issues was the way I would expect real everyday people to solve a disagreement. They argued, talked, had star seeing make up sex and that was that.

Something else I really appreciated about Mal & Anne was how down to earth and perfect they were for each other. Even though Mal was pretty much Anne’s polar opposite on the surface after a few chapters it’s easy to see why these two are attracted to each other. And that attraction is something that seriously jumps off the page. So in the end no I didn’t love it, but I did REALLY enjoy it and of course I’ve pre-ordered a copy for the 3rd book Lead!