Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  Better to Believe

SERIES:  Harrison Campus

AUTHOR:  Andy Gallo

PUBLISHER:  self-published

LENGTH:  207 pages

RELEASE DATE:  April 19, 2021

BLURB:

Fall for your best friend’s brother, just don’t break his heart.

Coury Henderson has wanted to play professional baseball since he threw his first pitch. If he’s drafted, he’s off to Tiny Town, USA to earn his ticket to the majors. But a freak injury threatens to derail his dream. If that weren’t enough, his graduation is in jeopardy. Physical therapy might solve the first hurdle, but he’ll need a tutor who is aces in science to solve the second. A tutor like Liam, his best friend’s little brother.

But when did Liam grow up to be such a hottie?

Liam Wright has crushed on his brother’s best friend since he was twelve. He jumps at the chance to tutor Coury and spend time alone together.

Not that anything could happen between them . . . as nice as Coury is to him, jocks don’t go for nerds.

So why does everything they do feel like a date?

“Better to Believe” is a best friend’s brother-to-lovers, nerd-jock, slow-burn M/M romance with a guaranteed HEA. This new adult, college age novel can be read as a standalone. The Harrison Campus series can be read in any order.

REVIEW:

Liam’s middle-school crush explodes into something much more now that he’s in college with his older brother Beckett’s BFF, Coury.  Coury, a college athlete on scholarship, has been out as bi since high school but Liam has always believed that Coury was out of his league and that he’d never see Liam as anything other than Beck’s annoying little brother who always wanted to tag along.  But Coury definitely doesn’t view Liam that way any more 😉  And while Beckett asks Coury to look out for his little brother after an unpleasant incident has Liam moving off campus and in with his grandfather, he in no way thinks that anything else is going to happen between them.

Coury and Liam’s relationship builds over the course of the semester as Coury tries to pull Liam out of his shell and be more social and Liam helps tutor Coury for the course he really needs to pass to graduate.  But the specter looming over them of Coury’s potential baseball draft and subsequent move to Tinytown, USA puts a little bit of a damper on things.  However, Liam won’t be deterred from having this moment with Coury and Coury finds himself needing Liam’s support and encouragement to do better academically and seeing him in a totally new light.

But when Beckett finds out that Coury and Liam are together, he explodes.  He cuts off his BFF and he’s pretty terrible and condescending to Liam as well.  Even their grandfather, Pop, has a hard time getting them to communicate without yelling.  And Coury is devastated.  He didn’t want to hurt anyone and now he’s on the outside and he’s not very happy – despite things going well on the baseball side of things.  But the bottom line is Coury has to decide what it is he really wants and then convince Liam as well.

This is one of my favorites of this series 🙂  I thoroughly enjoyed this story of the smart younger brother of the best friend Liam and baseball scholarship athlete Coury.  I did think Beckett’s reaction to them being together was a tad bit of an overreaction, but since I don’t have a little brother, maybe that’s how it goes 😉 One of the BEST characters in this story is Pop, Liam and Beckett’s grandfather.  He is wise and a little bit sneaky in trying to get Liam and Coury together.  And he’s got experience with a lot of what Coury is facing so he shares his story with Liam and with Coury to get them to see that there are many roads to take to happiness.  He also appreciates everything that they do for him.  I absolutely adored Pop and his happy ending as well.  Liam and Coury struggle with being honest and communicating directly with each other.  They are both worried about being hurt and being embarrassed and so things go very much up and down for them as they try to navigate their changed relationship.  But the bottom line is that they both care so much about each other that they are willing to make compromises.  While things might have worked out a little more neatly for them than for most, I loved the way they wanted to make each other happy and realized that long-term, being together was the most important thing.  Highly recommended, particularly for fans of college-age, new adult stories and nerd/jock stories too 😀

RATING: 

BUY LINK:

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