SUMMARY

Carter Beckett is the NHL’s resident badboy, top player both on the ice & in the bedroom, and quite possibly the sexiest man to ever grace my field of vision. But worst of all? He knows it.

He’s arrogant, self-centered, and the man doesn’t seem to know what a filter is, let alone how to use one. He’s had everything served to him on a silver platter, including endless strings of women, and apparently, I’m up next. 

His only problem? I have no intention of falling for his shi—um, charm. 

I have the solution to all my sexual frustrations in a drawer at home, and it’s far less complicated than Carter Beckett. Sure, he may be pretty, but he’s also a walking, talking reminder for you to wrap it before you tap it. 

But then I start letting my guard down, and he starts showing me pieces of himself I had no intention of seeing. The bricks surrounding me may be tumbling down one by one, but I’m not sold yet, which means for the first time in his life, Carter’s the one begging. 

For my time, my trust, for a single chance. 
For me to just…consider him.

Summary from Goodreads.

REVIEW

I’d been seeing the Playing for Keeps series absolutely everywhere and after hearing so many people rave about it, I finally decided it was time to see what all the hype was about. Consider Me came highly recommended by a few book lovers whose opinions I usually trust, so I went in with pretty high expectations.

I’ll start with the positives because there were definitely quite a few.

This book had me hooked within the first few chapters. Becka Mack’s writing is incredibly easy to get into and before I knew it, I was flying through the pages. The banter was entertaining, the chemistry between the main characters was obvious from the beginning and I could immediately see why so many readers fall in love with this series.

I’m always a sucker for an enemies to lovers romance and I thought that aspect of the story was handled really well. Carter and Olivia challenge each other from the very beginning and watching all the tension, witty back and forth and gradual shift from frustration to attraction was genuinely fun. Their relationship never felt forced and I enjoyed seeing their walls slowly come down as they got to know one another.

Carter was probably my favourite part of the book. Beneath his confident, cocky hockey star exterior was someone who genuinely cared about the people around him. He was funny, loyal, protective and surprisingly thoughtful and I found it easy to understand why Olivia was drawn to him. He had plenty of golden retriever energy that made him incredibly likeable, even when he occasionally made frustrating decisions.

I also really liked Olivia. She was independent, intelligent and never seemed willing to compromise who she was just because Carter entered her life. I appreciated that she had ambitions outside of the romance and felt like a fully developed character in her own right. Together, they had great chemistry and there were plenty of moments that had me smiling.

Unfortunately, the biggest reason this ended up being a three star read was the pacing.

At well over 500 pages, I couldn’t help feeling like the story dragged in places. There were sections that felt repetitive and I found myself thinking that the same emotional beats were being revisited without really moving the relationship forward. I think the story could have been significantly shorter without losing any of its impact.

The other thing that held this back for me was the miscommunication trope. It’s one of my least favourite romance tropes because so many problems could be solved by one honest conversation and that’s exactly how I felt here. There were moments where I wanted to reach through the pages and tell Carter to simply talk to Olivia. The conflict felt more frustrating than emotional and because it seemed so avoidable, it pulled me out of the story.

Overall, I completely understand why so many readers adore Consider Me. The romance is sweet, the chemistry is strong and Carter and Olivia are both easy characters to love. For me though, the drawn out pacing and reliance on miscommunication stopped it from becoming a favourite. I’m still interested in continuing the Playing for Keeps series because I can definitely see the potential. I just hope the next books are a little tighter and lean less on avoidable misunderstandings.

-Rachelle

I’m on Instagram at @rachellesbookshelf