Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: False Start

SERIES: Playing for Keeps, Book 2

AUTHOR: Neve Wilder and Riley Hart

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 255 pages

RELEASE DATE:  April 11, 2023

BLURB: 

If only my feelings were as fake as this “relationship” with my former teammate.

CULLEN: I’ve been the NFL’s “problem child” since my rookie year. If there’s trouble, I’ll find it.

But my biggest weakness has always been Houston McRae. We were secretly together in college before it blew up in our faces.

So, when I see him again years later, you’d think I’d know better than to end up in an airport bathroom stall tearing his clothes off.

To make matters worse, because of mistakes I’ve made, I find out afterward I’m being traded… to Denver.

Where Houston lives. Because of course.

I’m not taking responsibility for the two of us ending up in a fake relationship. That’s all on him, but I can’t pretend I won’t enjoy it. As long as I don’t let myself fall for him again, I’ll be fine, right?

HOUSTON: I lived, breathed, and slept football until an injury sidelined me for life. Now I’m solely focused on finding my place again… until Cullen Atwood walks back into my life and tempts me into an airport bathroom stall, where every ounce of passion for him I thought I’d buried returns with a vengeance.

Now he’s playing for the Rush…

And staying in my apartment.

And did I mention he’s also my fake boyfriend who makes it clear he still wants me every chance he gets?

I’ve got my future to think about, though, and we’re one wrong move from becoming a tabloid headline. I can’t afford to think of Cullen as anything more than a casual hook-up.

So why do I keep wishing this relationship was real?

False Start is a low angst, high-heat sports romance in the Playing for Keeps series.

REVIEW: 

Riley Hart and Neve Wilder are proving to be a formidable writing duo in the MM romance space.  False Start continues what they started in Rookie Move, the first book in their punny Playing for Keeps series.  Cullen and Houston play at a lot of things including football and a fake relationship that’s anything but fake. 

Cullen is an NFL star branded a troublemaker, a moniker that’s only partially accurate.  Cullen’s been traded time and again, and this time it’s to the Denver Rush, to the same town where his high school boyfriend, Houston, lives.  Houston used to be an NFL star until he suffered a career-ending knee injury, cutting him down in his prime.  Now Cullen and Houston have a second chance at making it work if only Houston can acknowledge that he’s still in love with Cullen and choose him first.

Hart and Wilder transform a trite premise into something different, effortlessly engaging us in Cullen and Houston’s journey back to each other.  The storyline is surprisingly low-angst, but expectedly flirty and fun with two expertly drawn leading men with incendiary chemistry.  Like Rookie Move, False Start contains many tropes – second chance romance, opposites attract, coming out, fake relationship, friends with benefits, forced proximity, roommates – but they are blended as seamlessly as Hart and Wilder’s voices.  It makes for fluid, keep-the-pages-turning reading.  

Cullen and Houston are complex, endearing characters with depth.  Their magnetic attraction to each other is evident from their first scene in the book, and leads to many high-heat, hot AF scenes together.  But it’s the tender feelings, the pure romance, and downright swoony scenes that make the most impact here. 

Garrett and Ramsey (from Rookie Move) have material roles in this story, creating a found family element out of real family (Houston is Garrett’s older brother and Ramsey’s best friend), their partners, and teammates.  As we saw in Rookie Move, Garrett is a loose cannon with no filter, so his collaboration here with the rambunctious Cullen is hysterical.  The magic they create on the football field with Ramsey, the Rush’s QB, is also fun to watch.

What I appreciate most about Hart and Riley’s writing collaboration is their focus on meaningful yet lighthearted, sexy stories with characters we want to know and don’t want to leave.  They certainly give us that here. Even amidst a fake relationship with ostensible denial of feelings, Cullen and Houston’s relationship feels genuine and even relatable despite the sometimes improbable events that play out.

So far, Hart and Wilder’s Playing for Keeps series is a winner.  I highly recommend both books, although you do not have to read Rookie Move to follow and enjoy False Start.  False Start is a treat all on its own. 

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon