Review: Tempting the Player
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 16, 2014
I liked the predecessor to this story enough to continue the series and found myself with the same amount of satisfaction with this novel when I finished it: "meh, I didn't hate it." The plot was fine, the characters were fine, the writing was fine--everything was fine, but nothing was great.TEMPTING THE PLAYER is the second in Lynn's (pen name of Jennifer L. Armentrout) Gamble brothers series, whereby each brother finds the love of his life, etc. etc. Chad Gamble--is the middle brother I believe--and a pitcher for the Washington Nationals. The series is set in the DC area and as such, the families and businesses of the characters are all rooted to the nation's capital. This proves problematic for Chad, as he is a professional player and subject to the whims of the organization. The Nationals are not happy with Chad or his playboy ways and though he is a star athlete--the Yankees are apparently interested in signing him for big money if the Nationals don't renew his contract--they are thinking of cutting him loose due to his behavior. Chad, of course, doesn't want to leave DC because he's close to his family and his favorite city; he also doesn't want to improve his behavior. When it gets to be too much--and the pitbull of a publicist called in to clean up his mess can't even get him to stay under the radar for an extended period of time--he's given an ultimatum: pretend to be in a relationship with the redhead he was spotted kissing or his contract isn't renewed. The redhead--or Bridget--happens to be the same girl he met at a club a month earlier that didn't reject his advances, but also snuck out on him when he was in the bathroom; she also happens to work for Madison Daniels (his brother's much adored girlfriend and one half of the couple from Lynn's TEMPTING THE BEST MAN, the first in the series). The two put on a show, but it becomes real, yada, yada, we all know where this is going..."Where the story was going" was not my chief complaint, but how we got there was. This is the same issue I had with the prior novel: I know that the two main characters will end up together, that there will be hijinks and cliches all around, but the execution of the plot--no matter how tired--makes the story and in my humble opinion, the execution here was just so so. I wanted to like both of the main characters (they each have flaws and back story to make them fleshed out), but I didn't find myself caring about them one way or the other. Also, while Lynn is obviously a talented writer, I did find some surprise grammatical errors like "I've ate" instead of "I've eaten" and so on, but on the whole, the story was just fine. I am interested to read the last in the series as it revolves around one of the characters introduced in this story--which is obvious by the way she's described when introduced--and the oldest Gamble brother, who seems the most interesting.