meeklovestoread 's review for:

Power Play by Chelsea Curto
4.0
funny lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
I predicted a 4-star for this book from the jump. 

I've just heard people saying they didn't love this one as much as the first one. I'm not sure if that swayed my opinion or not.

Anyway, onto the review. This book was cute; however, I think Chelsea was trying to do too much in here, which is an interesting thing for me to claim, considering you can argue that this book is a slightly different version of the first one. Similar to the first book, this book also portrays a friends-with-benefits situation, which I found to be an interesting choice considering this is the EXACT plot of the first book, BUT there is a twist whihc leads me into my complain of this book trying to do way to many things whihc as a reuslt causes it to not give adequate attention ot the the tropes it's trying to adhere to.

Examples of this:
  • A friends-with-benefits situation (the "he teaches her/talks her through it trope"). Fine. Whatever.

  • He's been pining after her for years (even when she was married)

  • They get drunkenly married in Vegas.
    Again, I don't think this was given the proper attention it needed. This book could've done without this trope because it really doesn't do anything in terms of the progression of their relationship. They were doing just fine without that.

  • They have to fake-date for his sister's wedding. [Which occurs at around the 60% mark of this book and doesn't last very long.
  • The whole abusive ex-husband who won't leave her own trope. This, in my opinion, is the one that was the most lackluster in this book, considering he barely got any screentime to make him a plausible antagonist for our pair. Considering how long this book is, I honestly wish she had gone into Piper grieving the loss of her marriage, the mental struggle that comes with being intimate with someone again, as well as the reason that drew her to her ex to begin with

Honestly, even as I was reading this book, I couldn't help but think of the other books it reminded me of, specifically "Play Along" by Liz Tomforde and The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren.
Even though it was poorly done, I still liked their drunken incident way more than I did in Play Along.


Now, I do think Chelsea Curto is a decent enough writer to be able to pull these tropes off individually, but I seriously think she tried to jumble way too many things in this book, which made the quality of the book go down in my opinion because it just felt like she was trying to check off boxes while she was writing.

Nonetheless, I still enjoyed this read. I really liked Piper. I found myself relating to her a bit on a few levels. I liked the way Chelsea portrayed Piper coming into herself and truly learning how to have sex for the first time in a while. I found it to be realistic enough. I also like Liam overall. I'm not really into grumpy MMCs, but he was nice.

Honestly, although I did like Piper x Liam, I'd say it's really the friend group that makes these books. This is the best friend group I've read in a romance yet. The way they are with each other is the most endearing thing ever. And the amount of funny moments they had in this book together was great. Shout to Hudson (can't wait for his book; he's already my favorite), Maverick (he's honestly top tier in this book; Co-MVP for sure), Emmy (she's great in this book), and Lexi (LOVED HER in this one; this made me extremely excited for her book).

Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 (there's load in here)