The Play

By: Elle Kennedy

Narrated by: Ana Osorio, Teddy Hamilton

Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

A brand-new stand-alone novel in the New York Times best-selling Briar U series!

What I learned after last year’s distractions cost my hockey team our entire season? No more screwing up. No more screwing, period. As the new team captain, I need a new philosophy: hockey and school now, women later. Which means that I, Hunter Davenport, am officially going celibate...no matter how hard that makes things. 

But there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t be friends with a woman. And I won’t lie - my new classmate Demi Davis is one cool chick. Her smart mouth is hot as hell, and so is the rest of her, but the fact that she’s got a boyfriend eliminates the temptation to touch her. 

Except three months into our friendship, Demi is single and looking for a rebound. 

And she’s making a play for me. 

Avoiding her is impossible. We’re paired up on a yearlong school project, but I’m confident I can resist her. We’d never work, anyway. Our backgrounds are too different, our goals aren’t aligned, and her parents hate my guts. 

Hooking up is a very bad idea. Now I just have to convince my body - and my heart.

©2019 Elle Kennedy (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

The Play

Demi & Hunter
This was an interesting book, I couldn’t get enough I never wanted to press pause. This couple went from friends to lovers and those are truly my favorite kinds of stories. I loved the other two books but I think this might just be my favorite.

Demi is so outgoing and Hunter is so set in his ways he doesn’t even see her coming. The humor in this book was great too. I love that it wasn’t too serious. They could poke fun and it was still sexy.

There was this one very serious scene and I am glad it was in here because it showed Demi’s depth as a character not that we didn’t already see it but it was just that little extra push.

I LOVED the narration, it’s no secret Teddy is a favorite of mine but it was Ana Osorio that hit it out of the park for me. I don’t think I have listened to her before or if I have I never put two and two together. I will be looking for more books by her you can’t bet your booty.

Teddy Hamilton's narration was the best part!

I hesitated to write this review, but I was disappointed with this audiobook. Teddy Hamilton's narration was wonderful! He does a great job with tone and inflection. I lose myself in the story and feel what the characters are feeling whenever he narrates. Plus his voice is wonderful to listen to! The female narrator was a disappointment. Her voice was fine, but she mispronounced words frequently. I found myself cringing and waiting for it each chapter she narrated. I also thought she used the wrong emotion or tone many times. Her narration actually distracted me from the story.

I am a fan of Elle Kennedy and her Off-Campus series were some of the first audiobooks I loved. I purchased this book even though I did not like the second Briar U as much as the The Chase. Then this book sat in my library for four months and I couldn't get into the story. I finally listened to the whole thing and it felt like a chore. I had a hard time connecting with the characters. There were parts that I thought were unnecessary and others that I would have appreciated more details. For example, Hunter's relationship with his parents. It's discussed but there were no scenes with his parents. Demi's interactions with her parents were frequent, but her relationship with her father confused me. Demi's father treats her like she is smart and strong one minute and then belittles her the next?

I didn't feel warm and fuzzy and satisfied at the end of this book. I just felt relieved it was over.

Mispronounced words

I cannot get past the way Ana Osario mispronounces words. Is there no one directing her performance? The story was good and Teddy Hamilton is solid but I will avoid books that she reads from now on.

So-so. Mispronunciations annoying.

Most people who enjoy listening to books enjoy language. We want to hear language as it is meant to be spoken. So when someone mispronounces words such as “executive” (ex-i-CUE-tive??) or ambiguity (am-BIG-u-I-ty) we get annoyed. It takes us out of the escape that listening to a book provides. Teddy gave a very good performance, but Ava’s reading was just that—a reading, not a performance and the number of mispronounced words was very annoying.

As for the story it was good, though not as good as “The Risk.” It was almost a little boring. I found myself wanting to hear more about the shenanigans of the rest of the hockey team than I did about the female character’s angst and irritating friends & family.

Worth a listen if you have run through the rest of the AE package, but not worth a credit IMO.

Just okay.

Elle Kennedy is my go to author for an escape from reality. This book however is not her best work. This was a stand alone book, however since she kept referring to previous characters and relationships I think it is helpful to have listened or read her previous works in this series. I listened through Audible Escape, so I did not use money or a credit. This is worthy for Audible Escape, but I would not buy or use a credit.

Hopefully the author reads this

Being hispanic i was very happy to learn that the main character was Cuban but very disappointed in the way she described the main character , like if she needed a man & be bitchy & needy it was so annoying & then on top of that not really give the girl a real dynamic ! Just saying if you are not hispanic & was to write ab a hispanic character please please get to know a hispanic person spend time with them & really see what walking in someone els shoes feel like !

Female Narrator Really Takes You Out Of It Sometimes

The best Briar U story out of the first three (and I liked one and two)! However the other reviewers are right, the female narrator really hurts the story. Her inflections are off (sometimes she sounds like she’s laughing at something serious). The biggest issue is her mispronouncing medium-level words like waft, griped, and executive. She was also in consistent in Greenwich and Malone (the latter was mispronounced not 30 seconds after pronouncing it correctly).

I think I understand why they went with this narrator (sounds more college-aged and this was a POC heroine) but I had to decipher some words and was surprised she got harder words correctly. A narrator shouldn’t take away from the story like this.

The plot was funny and fun. Teddy Hamilton was great!

Ugh the narration!

Story was okay. Male narrator was okay. The female narrator mispronounced so many words that it was painful to listen to this book. The mispronunciations were incredibly distracting.

Loved the story.

I loved Demi and Hunter’s story. Their chemistry and banter was off the charts. Thanks, Elle Kennedy for adding diversity in your writing. It’s nice to see everyone represented. It would have been nice to see more of Demi’s Afro Latino culture. Most African’s and Lantino really embrace and love their culture. Just a tiny bit of research would have given you insight on how to include that. I also wanted to see Hunter’s family and his relationship with his dad. But still the story was an amazing read and listen. It’s still a 5 star.

same problems as other reviewers

So... the story was great. Teddy was great. The female narrator had a little bit of an accent that fed well into the fact that the character was part latina BUT she mispronounced basic words. She was playing a character with a college level education, on the way to being a doctor but she pronounced gripes as grips and chaste as chast - and those are the easy vocabulary words that stuck out for me- we aren't talking about the more complex words. The mispronunciations became a distraction that took something away from the story. I was very glad to see Hunter getting a happy end to his arc though!

Best in the series

seriously funny, I laughed out loud on multiple occasions. it wasn't that spicy - and I really loved how hunter redeemed his character from past instalments.

only small annoyance was that Teddy Hamilton cannot do a female voice with a light Spanish accent, kind took me out of it when he had to speak her parts.