The Player

By: Felice Stevens

Narrated by: Blake Lockheart

Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Friday night lights hide more than they reveal…

When retired NFL superstar Keller Williams returns to his small town to coach his old high school football team, he’s surprised how much he enjoys being out of the limelight and on the field with the kids. Even more surprising is his immediate attraction to the father of one of his players—single dad Niall Harper.

Problem number one: Niall Harper isn’t gay.
Problem number two: Keller isn’t out to the world.
Problem number three: Niall hates his guts. And Keller has no idea why.

High school librarian Niall Harper has always done the right thing. Except be true to himself. Divorced and raising his teenaged son, Niall is dismayed to discover the new football coach is none other than his long-ago Friday night fantasy and nemesis. Not that it matters—Keller doesn’t remember him. It’s nothing new; Niall has always been easy to forget. Now Keller wants to be friends. And more. Niall can’t deny the annoying man makes him laugh and feel things he’d only dreamed possible. But would a player like Keller be satisfied with a regular guy like him?

Being together is more than complicated, but they are willing to take the risk. Niall reveals he’s dating his son’s coach, and Keller comes out to the team, his fans, the press, and small-town gossips. Neither is prepared for the fallout, but that doesn’t stop them. It’s time to throw the Hail Mary pass of a lifetime and win the game of forever. And they’re ready.

©2024 Felice Stevens (P)2024 Felice Stevens

Great story, great story!!

It’s an earnest and sexy romance tackling family, loss and coming out as an adult. I cared about both mc’s pretty quickly. It didn’t hurt that the audiobook features a really sexy half dressed beefcake football player on the cover art. It was easy to retain the image in chapters that focused his character. The narration is believable and satisfying.

Her best book yet!

Small town hero returns home and reunites with the bookish librarian who was bullied by the football hero’s old friends in high school. A journey of each coming to terms with who they are on their own and then together. I loved this story and will listen again!

Fantastic!

Love! I absolutely loved this small town romance. So much so, I had to listen on audio as well. Felice Stevens does a fantastic job picking her narrators to voice her characters. Blake Lockheart did a fantastic job drawing me into a story I had already read and loved. He brought all the feels with these two closeted men finding each other and their happiness. I adored Keller, he was a bright ray who loved what he found himself doing as he settled back in his hometown - coaching high school football. He brought a smile to my face more than a few times and was a guy you couldn’t help rooting for. Niall also works at the high school, and his son plays for Keller. Niall is none too happy to have Keller back in his life, even though Keller is oblivious to Niall’s past hurts. Keller’s presence brings back all the past feelings of bullying that Keller’s former teammates used to inflict upon him. I appreciated Keller’s doggedness in trying to get Niall to open up to him and tell him why he had so much animosity towards him. I enjoyed their slow fall into friendship and into more. Keller was so patient with Niall as he explored his sexuality, and I loved the firsts that Niall shared with Keller. I loved their chemistry and their connection. There was so much character build up of each of these men, and those who were most important to them, that you couldn’t help but get drawn into their story and the unfortunate drama that reared its ugly side. I loved the support they received when they needed it most. While their story was slow to develop, I couldn’t put it down. Do yourself a favor and block out some you time to listen (or read) this in one sitting! This was a wonderful story and I couldn’t recommend it more!

a small town romance

As a fan of this author's writing, I was surprised this was a hard one to finish. Not because of the TW, but because I didn't connect to these characters.
❤️❤️❤️❤️
- closeted MCs, homophobia, bullying, physical child abuse, small-town-small-mindedness

Trope-laden garbage

I almost feel bad that romance authors are so beholden to the tropes that romance readers crave that original stories are hard to come by. But there’s a way to do tropes right and a way to do them wrong, and this trope, which is enemies-to-lovers, is done wrong. Primarily, this is because Niall, the bookish nerd, begins the book being a complete jerk to Keller, our jock, and I was never really able to move past that.

Look, as someone who was mildly bullied in high school but is now roughly the same age as the characters in this book, I sort of get where Niall is coming from, but on a more realistic note, get over it already, dude. It happened twenty years ago when you were a kid. I can’t imagine still holding a grudge against people who I had an issue with in high school, holy cow.

The author tries to have her cake and eat it too, here. She wants us to like Keller, so HE didn’t bully Niall, nor was he even aware it was happening. And Niall knows this. But you can’t have it both ways; if Keller wasn’t involved, he wasn’t involved and Niall has no right to treat him like crap. But no, he berates Keller, makes him feel guilty for something he didn’t do, and Keller has to grovel to him because that’s how the trope goes and everyone’s head would explode if the plot weren’t mapped out for them before they even began the book.

This is also (sort of) a sports romance. There are two types of people who write sports romances: those who enjoy sports and those who think sports and the people who play them are worthless and should be dumped on at every opportunity. Personally, my experience in and after high school is that jocks were no better or worse than any other group, bullying-wise, and I suspect that everyone who automatically thinks jocks = bullies watches too many movies set in high school. This author seems very taken with the idea that jocks are jerks and “sports” is just something that other people enjoy, people who she doesn’t associate with.