{Blog Tour} Review + Giveaway: Play with Me by Piper Shelly

Synopsis

A short, sweet novella.

Ryan Hunter's parties are legend. And tonight she's going to be there.

Liza Matthews anticipates the return of her best friend and only love since kindergarten from soccer camp. But when Tony finally shows up, his mind is more focused on another girl. And worse, she's a soccer player. Fighting for the attention Liza craves, she's just a hairbreadth away from making a very stupid decision. But when extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, she's prepared to play ball to get her man.

The tryouts are hell, the first match ends bloody, and the morning after the selection party she wakes up in the worst place possible—in the arms of the captain of the soccer team. The hottest guy in school. Ryan Hunter.

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My Review

4.5 Very cute, *sigh*, young love stars!!

It's been quite a long time since I've read a true-blue YA book like this one. I say, true-blue because this book and others like it (see Julie Prestsater's So I'm a Double Threat as an example) has a more, shall I say, realistic portrayal of high school love and the drama that goes along with it. And personally, I find these books endearing and it takes me back to, well, my own high school days. :)

Play With Me tells the story of Liza Matthews, a semi-awkward high school student who's been in love with her best friend, Tony, since kindergarten. Unfortunately for Liza, Tony returned from soccer camp in love, but *gasp*, not with her but with another girl.

In order to get close to Tony and steal his attention away from his new love interest, Liza joined the soccer team organized by the boy's soccer team. Determined to fight for her man, Liza accepted Ryan Hunter's proposal to help her with her soccer skills.

Ryan Hunter, by the way, is the team captain. Gorgeous, loaded and actually very sweet. And he seems to enjoy Liza's company as much as she's enjoying his. But of course, not everything is quite what it seemed and when secrets started coming out, Liza must choose between Tony and Ryan. No worries though for all of you love-triangle-trope haters like me, this isn't a love triangle per se. Just one heck of a confuse girl who needs a little push in the right direction.

Very entertaining, very sweet, very cute novella about the joys and pitfalls of young love. I really enjoyed myself. Ryan Hunter is a wonderful hero and Liza is adorable. A great novella to read in between "heavier" themed books. Definitely worth it!

About the Author

The quick-and-dirty:
I’m a cool girl with a passion for writing.
The genres you’ll find me hanging out at are contemporary and paranormal YA, but I’m also snooping into some adult paranormal right now. All of them romances…of course.

The nitty-gritty:
I’m an Austrian lass—totally uncomplicated and up to anything fun.
I grew up in Vienna, not by free will but because my parents decided to move there when I was only 4 years old. I. Hated. The. City. Everything about it. So right after graduation I moved back to Upper Austria, where I settled down with a nice husband and an awesome laptop.

I’ve been a storyteller all my life. Already in kindergarten, I came up with the most exotic fantasies and tales. My teacher would call me a liar. I call it the cornerstone of my writing career.
People always told me you can’t make a living with being an author. So when my first novella PLAY WITH ME came out and shot straight to the stars within the first week, I was totally dumbstruck. Took me a while to realize what was happening, LOL.

And the personal stuff:
At the (awesome) age of seventeen, I met the love of my life. But he was a playboy, and I was so not going to be his next trophy. It took him another four years of fighting for me until I finally decided to give that “couple-thing” with him a shot. I’m now married to this man. ;-) We have an eleven-year-old son, and together we travel a lot…although I sometimes wish the trips were shorter because I can’t wait to get back to my laptop and my many stories. Unless we’re in Disneyland. No stress to go home then…If you still want to know more about me, my FAQ page is the right address for you. ;-)

Author Links

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Giveaway

Prize (open internationally):

--A boxed set of PLAY WITH ME and RYAN HUNTER. One book, both stories inside

a Rafflecopter giveaway

{Book Blitz} Excerpt: Crash into Me by Tracy Wolff

Crash Into My by Tracy Wolff

She’s totally off limits, but this rocker wants a taste…

Jamison Matthews has lusted after Ryder Montgomery since she was a preteen. But now that Ryder and her brother’s band, Shaken Dirty, has made it huge, she’s just one of many pining for the brooding lead singer. Too bad Ryder still sees her as a little sister. Not that it matters. Her brother would never allow it, and the last thing Jamison wants is to be another notch on a rock star’s bed post. Even if it’s Ryder’s.

Ryder doesn’t deserve happiness. After his fame destroyed his last girlfriend, he swore he’d never fall in love again. So when Jamison, the girl he’s been in danger of loving for years, joins the band on the road, he’ll do anything to deny the sparks between them—even after one hot night together. But Jamison is determined to show Ryder that he’s worthy of love—her love—and that she’s all grown up…and ready to play.

Excerpt

Onstage, the band launched into “Awake,” one of the power ballads that had made them famous. The crowd screamed their approval and so did she. Totally not her typical modus operandi, but she couldn’t help it. Something about listening to Ryder croon the darkly haunting lyrics had her knees trembling and her heart beating much too quickly. If she closed her eyes, she could do what all the other women in the audience were doing and pretend that he was singing straight to her.

            So much better than remembering he’d written these heartfelt words for another woman. For Carrie, who had killed herself and broken his heart so many years before. Her own heart ached at the thought. For him. Always for him. At twenty-nine, Ryder had already been through more darkness and despair than any one person should have to handle.

            “Awake” finally came to a close, the last note hanging in the air for long, tension-fueled seconds. Then the band fell silent and the audience did the same, as if they were all holding their breaths. Ryder lowered his guitar, shuffled, and stamped his feet once, twice. It was a familiar gesture, one years of experience had taught her was his way of shaking off excess emotion. Again her heart twisted. It devastated her that more than ten years after the fact he was still eaten up by what had happened. Still determined to bury it under a bunch of layers that not only insulated him from his pain but also hid the real Ryder so deep inside the public Ryder that she wondered sometimes if he even existed anymore. Or if the boy who had held her while she cried, who had let her whisper her pre-adolescent fears without ever making fun of her, had disappeared forever.

            She searched for him in that one endless moment.

            Looked for him in the obsidian eyes that arrowed to the heart of the crowd even as they barricaded his own emotions.

            Combed through her own memories and expectations in an effort to see Ryder as he really was instead of how he portrayed himself.

            And when his eyes—his crazy, beautiful eyes—met hers, she found him. Seconds passed, long, intense seconds where she lost the ability to hear or breathe or even think. All she could do was look into Ryder’s eyes, at the feral heat boiling up and out of them, and want.

            She smiled at him, waved. He snarled back. But it wasn’t a leave-me-alone snarl. No, definitely not. It was his I-want-to-fuck-you-up-against-a-wall snarl—she knew it well, had seen it directed at a lot of women through the years—and her knees gave way when she realized that this time, finally, it was directed at her. It didn’t matter that there was no sign of recognition in his eyes, no knowledge that the woman he was looking at like that was actually her. Jamison. For one moment, he wanted her the way she’d always wanted him.

            It was more than enough.

 Purchase Links

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About the Author

Tracy Wolff collects books, English degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the wonderful world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. By ten she’d read everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local bookstore, so in desperation her mom started her on romance novels. And from the first page of the first book, Tracy knew she’d found her life-long love. Now an English professor at her local community college, she writes romances that run the gamut from contemporary to paranormal to erotic suspense.

Connect with Tracy

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