Title: The Play
Author: Karina Halle
~ 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.
From the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact and The Offer, comes The Play, a standalone spinoff and contemporary romance about taking chances and rescuing hearts.
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.
~4 STARS~
I feel like I need to exclaim to all that I have FINALLY read a Karina Halle book!!! Crazy, right? I know....shocking. I have been recommended her books many times, and I finally jumped at the chance to read this one. Ultimately, I wanted to read The Pact and The Offer before I read The Play, but she made this a standalone and did a really good job introducing us to the love and friendships I missed out on by not reading those two books first...but you better believe those are on my personal reads list and will be reading them ASAP. If only I had more #TIME. Thankfully, all these books are standalones, so I will be able to go through and read them.....even knowing a little about their continued story from reading this book.
First, I must say that this was a touching and beautiful book. One that tugged on my heartstrings A LOT. It really brought out the emotions, starting with tears in the prologue and ending with smiles in the epilogue. I even had tears in between, which is a big deal because I do NOT tear up or cry while reading books. Only a select few have ever made me tear up. This book did hit on a few touchy subjects for me that are WAY out of my comfort zone to read about because they do strike close to home, but I am glad I read it. I really enjoyed Kayla and Lachlan's love story.
This book encompassed PURE, unadulterated honest love. Love that came from the unexpected and weeded through the unknown and persevered through the tragic. Kayla was a little spitfire of a girl that had pure spunk and didn't give a damn what anyone thought. I really liked that side of her....she had a no nonsense type of attitude and had a neat vibe to her. I feel like she lost a little of that spunkiness when the story started to ramp up, but I felt her pain and confusion when life handed her 'lemons'. Lachlan was this strong beast of a man that had brute force in just his glares alone. That.Is.Sexy. He was the meaning of 'all man' in the flesh. Sadly, grief pulled him down to the depths of despair and held onto him with an iron fist. He had some seriously nasty demons to contend with that were deep in his soul. He had some powerful emotions and reading it from his POV was really intriguing. He was strong and manly when he needed to be, sexy and demanding when he wanted to be, and an ASS when he shouldn't have been....but his emotion was written really well. I really enjoyed feeling all the pain and torture they felt and felt that I could identify with what was going on.
The truest meaning of love was tested in this book and I really liked the way it all played out. I felt it was a little too wordy in some areas, resulting in me feeling like some of it was redundant and overly repetitive, but the characters' love was something beyond what dreams are made of. And these two set the pages ON FIRE. They were ridiculously HOT!!!! It really was a beautiful story and I am so glad that I got the chance to read it and be on tour. I will be recommending this book.
*An ARC was provided in exchange for an honest review*
~Karina Halle~
With her USA Today Bestselling The Artists Trilogy published by Grand Central Publishing, numerous foreign publication deals, and self-publishing success with her Experiment in Terror series, Vancouver-born Karina Halle is a true example of the term "Hybrid Author." Though her books showcase her love of all things dark, sexy and edgy, she's a closet romantic at heart and strives to give her characters a HEA...whenever possible.
Karina holds a screenwriting degree from Vancouver Film School and a Bachelor of Journalism from TRU.
Her travel writing, music reviews/interviews and photography have appeared in publications such as Consequence of Sound, Mxdwn and GoNomad Travel Guides. She currently lives on an island on the coast of British Columbia where she’s preparing for the zombie apocalypse with her fiancé and rescue pup.
~Social Media Links~
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