Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  The Play

SERIES:  Charleston Condors, Book 4

AUTHOR:  Beth Bolden

PUBLISHER:  Self-Published

LENGTH:    391 pages

RELEASE DATE:  March 6, 2024

BLURB:

Last year, defensive end Deacon Harris witnessed the very worst of the Charleston Condors. After everything he and the team went through, he promised himself he’d walk away from football. But before he can retire, the team is sold to the last person he ever expected to see again.

Deacon stays because the Condors are going into major rebuilding mode. New owner. New coach. New players. New rules.

But one rule hasn’t changed: don’t fall in love with the owner of your football team.

Grant might be brilliant and a billionaire, but Deacon only remembers Grant as his tutor in college—and as the one who got away.

In all his dreams about reconnecting, he never imagined that Grant would end up as his boss. Both his downfall, and also his salvation.

Or that they’d be forced into confronting the Condors’ most difficult challenge yet—but that they’d face it together, hand in hand, tackling their critics and proving once and for all that love doesn’t take sides.

REVIEW:

Beth Bolden concludes her Charleston Condors series with The Play, which finally brings us the romance of Condors owner Grant Green and the team’s veteran defensive end, Deacon Harris.  The chemistry between these two has been crackling since earlier in the series; every time they appear on page together, it’s like the temperature goes up ten degrees.  Bolden does a nice job giving us their history, although given the lengths Grant goes to for Deacon, I would have thought there would have been more to it.

The strength of this story is in the found family of the team – seeing the previous couples and even the tie-backs to the characters from the Condors’ rival team, the Piranhas. Deacon and Grant work surprisingly well as a couple, too, and I liked each character in equal measure. The weakness in the story, though, is in its length and slow-pacing, the latter I blame on a general lack of dynamics in the storyline and minimal on-field football action. That’s not to say there isn’t any of Bolden’s astute, strategic detailed football play action – there is, but it’s more towards the end of the story.  A more balanced story with action threaded more often and throughout would have kept the pace moving better.

That being said, I enjoyed The Play and didn’t have trouble sticking with the story, even if it didn’t have me up all night turning the pages.  If you are a fan of this fictional football universe, you will enjoy how Bolden brings the series to a satisfying conclusion in The Play.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon