Title: Trick Play

Series: Fake Boyfriend

Author: Eden Finley

Publisher: Indie Publisher

ISBN: 978-1983232367

Goodreads Rating: 4.1, Amazon Rating: 4.5

Personal Rating: ‘Hey, I just met you and this is crazy.’

2/5 ⭐⭐

Matt:

Want to know the fastest way to get screwed out of a football career? Get photographed in a compromising position in a gay bar. Yep, welcome to my life. 

My agent says he can fix my image. He wants me to become the poster boy for gay football players. Me? I just want back on the field. I’ll do anything to play for the NFL again, even pretend to have a steady boyfriend. If only my fake boyfriend wasn’t Noah Huntington III—the most arrogant, entitled rich guy in the world.

Noah:

Pretend to be Matt Jackson’s boyfriend, my best friend said. It’ll be fun, he said. What Damon neglected to mention is Matt is surly and bitter. Being his boyfriend is a job in itself. From his paranoia over being constantly photographed to his aversion to PDA, being with Matt isn’t the care-free fake relationship I expected when I signed on to do this. 

It’s supposed to be a win-win. I get to stick it to my politician dad who thinks no one is good enough for the Huntington name, and Matt’s reputation of being the bad boy of football dies.

What I don’t expect is to start caring for the guy. That’s not part of the plan. Then again, neither is fooling around with him. 

Oops

---

I am going to be completely honest here, Noah was my least favorite character in the first book and that one had Erik as an option. I think it’s due to the fact that Damon and Maddox tried to get others to understand that while what he did was horrible he wasn’t a horrible person overall. He was a scared young man who hadn’t yet been given the chance to grow up and face his demons.

Which, ya know, yay him but he is still a homophobe.

So when we are having that message beaten into our brains Noah just so happens to be all that’s left and by the gods did he annoy me. So color me surprised when I reached his book and still hated him for the majority of the story.

This has a lot to do with the fact that he doesn’t seem to comprehend personal space, nor does he seem to understand that Matt is going through a very real crisis. I get that he and his friends are trying to help Matt fix his problems, but they are going about it the wrong way. Then again, I’m not famous. So this could be the proper way to do things, but my bank account doesn’t let me relate to that. What I can relate to is well-meaning people butting in and ruining my desire to wallow in my filth and self-pity.

That aside, I understand it. Noah doesn’t deserve the hate. It is interesting to see how the image we got of him during the first book isn’t the one we see in the second. He is caring and understanding and tries to be there for the people he loves. He doesn’t have to help Matt, but he does so anyway because this means something to Damon.

That being said, Noah is a judgmental douche on so many levels that the elevator doesn’t even make complete stops anymore.

Most of that has to do with the fact that he is a trust fund baby of a politician. Yes, he has his issues, but most of them are things rich people deal with. So his father is a bit overbearing, and his mother is there. His parents love him, but they have their own lives going on, and he is very much an accessory item, made worse by the fact that he is biracial and gay. What I mean by this is that his very birth paved the way for his father’s political career because it further proved that he cared for minorities in America.

A tale as old as time for cisgender white men.

That doesn’t mean that his father is all there as he is the main problem to their relationship. Which is annoying because Matt’s racist, homophobic, verbally abusive, small town country family. Is. Right. There!!!

What do you mean there isn’t any racism in this story?? Why not? This story is perfect for it but the author decided to just not.

I am a chaotic neutral poc queer whose sexual orientation can be summed up as a giant question mark, and you are going to tell me that they only hint at racism and homophobia in a story with an interracial gay couple. Wack! I call wack!

So yeah, angst aside, this was something. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good enough to write home to your ancestors. Noah is still my least favorite, but I do appreciate him a bit more in this story. I can’t wait to start disliking him again in other people’s books.

I may have a prejudice against nepotism.

I’ll talk to my therapist about that, promise.