Review: Play Me had all the makings for an amazing start to a serial
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.Play Me had all the makings for an amazing start to a serial, but I didn't love it.Kira needed protection from an abusive ex-boyfriend (Nate), so she sought shelter with a few of her old gaming buddies that live together. The problem with that is she had a huge falling out with the one who owns the house she's seeking shelter in, Alex.Apparently, all of the roommates are gorgeous and they all want to protect her. Alex is broody; Ollie is level-headed; and Ethan is playful.Kira used to have a crush on Alex, but he never outwardly showed any interest, which is why she moved on to crazy Nate. After things go south with Nate and Kira moves in with the guys, there's a weird tension between Alex and Kira. I get why it was there, sort of, but sometimes Alex felt unnaturally obstinate. He was very cold toward Kira and just expected her to know why. It sometimes felt like his anger was a little forced.I did, however, enjoy the flashback to a couple of years ago. Kira and Alex were super cute at that time and it helped me to see why she liked Alex once upon a time, because present day Alex isn't all that great.I would have liked to get more information about Nate, as well. Everyone else in the story seemed to know all that was going on, but I felt like I only had a few details. We're told that her ex was abusive and that she left him and that was all. I wondered about when/how things went wrong and how the great escape from the relationship went down.The ending just felt like the end of a chapter to me. I didn't feel it was much of a cliffhanger; just a statement of an unfortunate fact that we knew would eventually happen. I read another review suggesting that having this as a full book instead of a serial would probably be better and I agree. I think (and this is just a guess since none of the other parts of this series have been released yet) that I would enjoy this as one whole book in which I get all of the information at once. I just needed a bit more of...something...to get me invested.I'll probably wait until the entire serial has been written/released before I dive back into things, but this was a decent beginning.