An agreement to benefit both parties…

Synopsis

One football player.

Two simple rules.

Three fake dates. 

Zero chance of falling for the other.

Emmett Hudson is just trying to play college football at Clearview Falls University while keeping all the balls from spinning his life apart. He thought he had everything under control until the coach threatened to bench him if he didn’t get his grades up with the help of a tutor.

Lucy Parker isn’t into football players, except the one she’s crushed on since high school. But he’s the star quarterback and doesn’t even know she exists. 

The answer to this problem comes when a deal is struck with her new tutoring assignment, aka: Emmett. He promises a way to get his teammate’s attention if Lucy commits to being his fake girlfriend for three dates.

Three. Seems easy enough. Right?
But even with safeguards in place, their fake relationship soon begins to feel more real than either Lucy or Emmett expects.

And with their hearts on the line, it could turn this winning strategy into a losing proposition.

My review

Lucy Parker is focused on her studies and she won’t allow anything or anyone to distract her. And yet, that includes football players. Although, there is only one football player that she is interested in, Joel Henderson, the quarterback she has a huge crush on. Unfortunately, Joel never looked at her in an interested way.
So when her latest tutoring assignment, Emmett Hudson needs her help, they make a deal… He will help Lucy to get on Joel’s radar, if Lucy agrees to be his fake girlfriend for three dates.
how odd it may seem, Emmett has his own reasons making this kind of deal, as there are just to many balls for him to keep in the air. He isn’t only worrying about the game, but now that his grades are not what they should be, Emmett could lose all the control he thought he had…
However, despite the clear agreements Emmett and Lucy made beforehand, how much of their relationship is being fake in the end? 

For a while, I thought that sports romance would not be my cup of tea. All that testosterone, macho – behaviour and other clichés, to have an ending being too predictable and all the issues suddenly disappeared.
But of course, it all depends on the author of these kind of books to make it worth reading. And lately I have discovered several authors of sports romance that were worthy of my reading time, these included! 

Even if I am still at the young age of nearly 37, I could rely a lot with Lucy. Now, I never was someone that could tutor a student, but I could relate to her focus, and not being the kind of girl that goes out each weekend. And for sure, just like Lucy, my clothing were (and sometimes still are) very casual, making me feel at ease.
And yes, even I had a huge crush on the most popular guy, yet I never got on his radar (his loss! 😊). 

So having a lot in common with Lucy, I could also completely agree with her getting frustrated when Emmett fails to arrive on time for her tutoring. Coming late after agreed a specific time just irks me terrible! 

Yet having this story showing us both sides of the same medal, I could also understand why Emmett was initially late. And I could also understand his point.
My heart went out to him, because he is trying his best to keep everything in control. And while it shouldn’t be up to him, seeing him taking care of someone who means so much to him, was making me fall in love with him, turning me into a cougar! 😊  

Lucy and Emmett couldn’t be more different from each other, somehow the nerd vs. the popular footballer.
Yet they manage to strike up a friendship, based on faking being together. I loved reading how the both of them are looking after each other, even if that wasn’t part of the initial plan. And of course it was marvellous to see how genuine they are together, not even realizing that there is no question of them faking to care about each other. 

And those streaks of jealousy of Emmett, even if those moments were terrible for him, for me they were hilarious! At the same time we also see how Lucy starts to realize that Joel/Hendy may not be the man she truly wants but it may be that obnoxious football player she is tutoring. Just priceless moments, all of them!  

Yes, I am deliberately not talking about the heated moments between Lucy and Emmett. Because while they were absolutely heated, I found them also sweet and tender and I just want you to discover those moments yourself, without me spoiling anything! 

There was one part I hated in the story… and it’s the terrible ending of the second act, where everything seems to crash in an unfixable way… I hated to see how these two lovely characters, even according to their plans, break up whatever they had. It was so frustrating to see their inability to express their true feelings, keeping up the pretence that everything was just that, pretence… 

But luckily for us, invested readers, there is a third act, which allowed me to forgive these wonderful authors for what they made me go through!

I truly enjoyed reading this story about two total opposites spending time together. Because them realizing that not every cliché is true, and finding something they didn’t know they were looking for, was an absolute treat to read! I was initially bit worried that I would end up disappointed, but my fears were totally unfounded!