Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: The Hater Playbook
SERIES: Boyfriend Rules #2
AUTHOR: Baylin Crow
NARRATOR: Iggy Toma
PUBLISHER: Tantor Audio
LENGTH: 4 hours and 8 minutes
RELEASE DATE: April 2023
BLURB:
My brother’s best friend is the biggest player on campus—both on the basketball court and between the sheets.
Not that I can blame the swarm of girls that worship Knight Jackson’s size fourteen sneaker-covered feet. I’ve been in love with him for as long as I can remember. He’s been breaking my heart for just as long.
While I’d been busy memorizing every detail about him, he’d never seen me as anything other than Pace’s younger brother. It wasn’t smart to crush on a straight guy in the first place, so now that I’m in college, I’m ready to move on. The problem is I’m clueless when it comes to dating.
A brilliant idea occurs to me when I’ve had one too many shots of tequila. I may not know what I’m doing, but Knight does. And he owes me for the years I spent pining for him, right? Right.
So I text the heartbreaker, asking for help. I never expected him to agree.
And I definitely never expected him to offer to give me lessons on how to drive a guy crazy in bed.
Contains mature themes.
REVIEW:
I came to this book in an unusual way. It was on a recommendation of sorts. I’d posted that I was looking for a story with elements of the Cyrano plot. This was suggested as it involves a younger guy getting romantic/courting advice from an older, more experienced player. Plus the mentor would actually prefer to be the one doing the romancing rather than helping his young protege with their stated goal.
This tale DOES somewhat have some congruencies with what I was looking for and the characters did seem like folks I would enjoy spending some time with. Given what I was looking for, I was predisposed to like this but the book does have some flaws that annoyed the proofreader in me.
The first, that kept repeatedly bothering me was a missed opportunity. One romantic lead (our Cyrano) is best friends with the older brother of our other romantic lead. That point is quickly and ably established when our Cyrano character refers to the younger guy as “Mini-Walsh” and the kid bristles at the teasing nickname. My problem with this is that that term is never used again in that form. For some reason, the teasing nickname is changed to Little Walsh which doesn’t work as elegantly, and given that that nickname is used a dozen times or so it’s a semi-constant reminder that it might have been better.
The mix-up with the nicknames Mini-Walsh vs Little Walsh seemed kind of careless given the prominence that it’s given.
A similar problem was noted by another reviewer who mentioned the many overdone descriptions of lips.
It’s part of an author’s job to create scenes that the reader can envision. Generally, I believe that it’s the author’s prerogative as to how they do that. It felt like the author here was somewhat clumsy in that regard. Another facet of that problem was there were so many unnecessary and ineptly placed descriptions. Using an unnecessary adjective can often disrupt the story more than add to it. e.g. When describing a two-man dorm room mentioning that Vaughn is “lounging on the room’s uncomfortable bed” might interrupt the flow of what’s going on, causing the reader to wonder “Why is only one bed uncomfortable? How does Owen know that that bed is uncomfortable? Is there ONLY one bed?”
Example two… Why does it matter that our protagonist chooses light blue underwear when heading to the shower? Particularly when he’s in the midst of obsessing over the other protagonist’s reactions to a comment on social media?
And finally, when the character is kvetching about the heater in his crappy old car not working, why does the reader need to know that the car is ruby red? Illuminating the RIGHT details adds to a story; drizzling random details into the story in a Jackson Pollock-like manner doesn’t.
Other than the petty “authorial annoyances”, the characters are likable, the story is sweet and is generally well-told. I always enjoy stories where “straight” guys realize that they may be more bent than they previously thought. This is NOT an erotic novel. The sex scenes here are all integral to the story and while they’re NSFW, they’re mostly pretty tame and focus on the romantic over the raunchy.
This is my first exposure to this author and I enjoyed the tale well enough to add another of her books to my TBR list. I’ll be curious to see if the flaws that annoyed me in this book are repeated and whether the author can once again overcome the minor imperfections and still craft an enjoyable story.
I listened to this in audiobook form rather than reading it. Narrated by Iggy Toma, the story moves along well and is ably served by a single narrator. Toma is quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators. Iggy has a bit of an Adam Brody kind of thing going with his narrative voice style – which I find generally works quite well. That style does seem more pronounced here than in other things I’ve heard him read.
This book is very suitable for a solo narration. The story is told in MM Romances’ now standard “he said / he said” chapter-swapping style. The two main characters are distinctive enough that their voices are never confused. And since the tale focuses so heavily on the two main characters, there’s not much dialogue provided by the supporting cast, but what is there, is acted in a workman-like way as well.
RATING: 
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