Thank you so much to Wattpad books for an advance copy of this!

This book comes out on October 22nd.

This book has been on my radar since I saw it popped up on NetGalley and my goodness, I absolutely LOVED IT! As soon as I started reading it, I knew very early on that I was going to love this book.

"The truth is, plenty of girls have called me hot, Maddie, but you're the only one I've ever wanted to hear it from."

I just love the relationship between Maddie and Cameron. I have read a lot of brother's best friend books this year and this one is right up there. It gave me all the swoony feelings! Maddie and Cameron have had mutual crushes on each other for years but neither acted on it. They have come close but never went through with it.

They both were just so in love with one another but I love how we got to see them when they were younger and how their relationship grew. Cameron was so protective of Mads and knew that she was the one for him. He tried so hard not to want her, heck she even interrupted him while he was with someone else!

"You stayed the night..Trust me when I say I wouldn't have allowed that if I didn't find you absolutely addicting, okay?"

I was unfamiliar with the author prior to this and I really liked her writing style. Cameron had more of a storyline than Maddie and with that I thought Faison did a good job blended the story and spice. And lord, she did not hold back on the spice!!! There was a moment at a restaurant and made me feverishly keep on reading and it was just so hot! Another moment that will live rent free in my mind is when she texts him to come to her room after he was done playing video games with her brother - whewwwww!

I just really loved this book and breezed right on through! I am looking forward to the next book in the series!

Check this book out if you love a brother's best friend, childhood friends, full of swoon & spice!

BROTHER'S BEST FRIEND IS SO HOT. Period. That’s it. 🔥

This is the PERFECT palette cleanser for anyone craving some sugar, spice, and everything nice 🍬🌶️✨ It was so cute seeing Maddie, who’s always had a crush on Cameron, finally accepting it would never happen... until Spring Break rolls around, and wowza! Who doesn’t love a man going, "Why am I jealous? She’s off-limits." 😏

I loved the dual POV because you could totally feel their emotions tangled up in every interaction until they finally cut the tension and started to untangle everything 💖 Not gonna lie, I was worried for them, our boy Cameron has some serious trauma, and it shows lmao! But I’m so glad with how things wrapped up.

And let’s not forget the spice because it was CALIENTE 🌶️🔥 I enjoyed every single scene sometimes, you just need to read it for the smut and this one DELIVERED. 😍

Tropes:
✨Brother's best friend
✨Childhood crush
✨Friends to lovers
✨Secret romance
✨Sports Romance (he plays football-but in spring break setting)

Thank you, NetGalley, Wattpad Books, & Deanna, for this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Maddie has been harboring a crush on her brother's best friend, Cameron, for YEARS. This spring break, Maddie has decided to step out of her comfort zone by going to parties and catches the attention of Cameron. They decide to explore this relationship while they are both home from college. What could possibly go wrong as playboy Cameron and good girl Maddie try to keep their relationship under wraps from her overprotective brother? Throughout the book, there are will they-won't they vibes which keeps you enthralled. Cameron is charming and her their banter had me laughing. If you are looking for a strong female lead, secret relationship, and a dash of family drama, this book has it all! Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow this book had me hooked so fast and loved everything about it! The tension, the sneaking around I loved it all! The only thing I would wish for is more, I think the book ended so abruptly and I wish I had a little more.


Read if you love:
Brothers best friend
Childhood friends


Thank you for this arc 🩶🩶

Thanks to Netgalley and Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group for the E-Arc. This was about 2 really young characters 19 Maddie and 21 Cameron who have been friends since babies but they are not friends anymore. Maddie and Cameron have crushes on each other but Cameron is her brothers best friend and your typical playboy. While this was the typical teenage/young adult story I liked that we really saw Cameron trying to change and grow from what happened to him.

I thought this was so cute! The style was super similar to Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker/Wildfire/Daydreamer or Elle Kennedy’s The Graham Effect or Dixon Rule and I loved it! The spice was spicy, the romance was top tier swoon with butterflies, the heart break was gut wrenching and tear inducing. I loved the writing style. Overall, I loved this book and would definitely read more by this author.

Oof this was a huge miss for me! I always feel so bad writing these reviews but I honestly couldn’t even get through it. Unfortunately this was a dnf

i had trouble with the writing of this one, i felt it required maybe another round of edits

thank you to netgalley for an arc of this in exchange for my honest review

I had such high hopes for this to be a cute love story between a sister and brother’s best friend with some football thrown in. Unfortunately, it just didn’t hit the bar.

This book was way too angsty to enjoy, and had a lot of (too many) spicy scenes that just didn’t add to the story the way well written spice does. I wish there was a bit more character development and substantial plot. The characters seemed super, super immature.

*ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and truthful review.

Okay who was keeping the football romances a secret?? I knew hockey was great but football now too?

Sports romances never fail to be equally spicy and sweet and this book is no exception. We have a childhood best friend/brother’s best friend romance that is delicious. Not only have the two main characters been infatuated with each other for years but they also secretly share the same ambitions brought on by grief. In the book we got to see both characters overcome a lot to be happy but it was a beautiful story on the way there.
PS if you have a praise kink read immediately.
PSS are we getting another book for Ethan now?

I enjoyed reading Playmaker but I must confess it was just an alright read. I find it difficult to find anything extremely positive to say about the book but I think it's just because it felt generic a lot of the time. I wish there were more substance to Maddie, the FMC. I felt like I understood Cameron's motivations and backstory but felt extremely disconnected from Maddie. I also just feel like the plot went in circles a little too much for my taste. That being said, I don't regret reading and I don't feel as though I wasted my time. If anyone's looking for an easy read to get out of a slump, this is a decent book to do that.

DNF- Cute cover, but not my type of romance. The writing is lacking. I recommend maybe going back to the beginning and rewriting everything to make it digestible.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

First of all I love the cover. It's perfect. I read this book via Net Galley. This is the first book I have read from this author. I flew through this brothers best friend story. Maddie and Cameron are adorable together. He almost makes his move but chickens out when they are young but a week later tragedy strikes and Cameron changes his focus. Once the final blow comes he is emotionally wrecked. He pushes Maddie away thinking he was doing the right thing. He starts high school blowing through girls and playing football to cope. Maddie can't move on from her feelings for Cameron. They are both back in town from college for spring break and back in each others lives for a couple weeks. They find a way to be friends but can they find a way to be more? They have a lot of obstacles to overcome but the they will get there.

I really enjoyed this book. There was quite a good amount of spice and angst. I really loved Cameron's personal journey and how he was able to move through his grief and how Maddie was so strong throughout for him. So many good tropes with this book too! I wish the author would've given us an epilogue for a few years down the road, but the ending was sweet even without.

I really thought I was going to enjoy this one. I like sports romances and having a brother’s best friend trope together was something that could’ve worked. Unfortunately, this was just not for me at all 😬

There is so much more smut than plot. And that’s fine if people prefer it but I really do mean there was nothing else but smut in this. I read it thoroughly for the first 25%, but quickly started skimming past everything because of the flat storyline. By the time I hit 50%, I was only reading every other dialogue scenes and that was it. Every scene with Maddie and Cameron is them fighting, getting turned on by each other, doing the dirty, and something comes to break them up. Literally anything—Maddie getting turned off by not being his first, Cameron saying he’s an expert at everything sex, his football maniac dad, Maddie’s brother, etc. It was so repetitive and had no substance at all. Even the deep, personal scenes felt so flat and empty and forced like it was just there to contrast (not effectively) with all the smut. There was so much telling about how badly they cared for each other and how they couldn’t stand to be away from each other, but my goodness. It felt like it was being thrown in our faces with no subtlety.

Maddie was a very flat character. There was so much telling versus showing about her life. We’re told she studies so much to be an oncologist and I just didn’t feel anything personal with that because it was all told, not shown. It didn’t make me want to root for her. She was really annoying, too. Her best friend, Maya, literally warned her about hooking up with Cameron and not wanting her to get hurt (valid, you go, hun) because he is such a playboy and uses sex with girls as literal therapy??? (stated multiple times, fyi. If that’s not a red flag I don’t know what is 🚩🚩🚩 And what does Maddie say? She says it doesn’t matter if she gets crushed in the end because at least she had those moments with him. But then spends later scenes moping about how she wasn’t his first, other girls turn him on more, etc. She just makes the most questionable decisions for herself and it’s frustrating. I can’t root for you like this, sis.

Cameron might be the most frustrating and annoying MMC I’ve ever read in a romance before 😤😤 Every single page is about how he has sex with so many girls and how he’s known for hitting-it-and-quitting-it (his words, not mine) 🤢 He gloats so much about how he’s hot and knows it (literally states he cannot even count how many girls have said he’s hot, as cocky and unbelievable it sounds to us readers). Also he’s so possessive and not in a good way. Like borderline creepy and wanting to be near Maddie and have sex with her and kiss her every moment, but not wanting to get attached. But also struggling with having feelings for her. Am I supposed to support him? He literally says he wants to hear her say she loves him, but says he doesn’t want to say it back because he’s too emotionally detached. LIKE PLEASE 🥴🥴 And I know cancer is awful and trauma can really get in the way of building healthy relationships. But this boy literally uses it for every single thing! The trauma-dumping and using it as a valid excuse was really bad in this one.

Also this needs to be said, but he mentions becoming physically aroused so many times by Maddie that it’s just ridiculous the way he describes it. It’s always “my dick this” and “my cock that” and OH MY GOD. He mentions it so many times figuratively and literally that his own dick could be a supporting character in this book 🙄🥴 Like why does he need to tell us what his dick is doing every single time? I wish I was lying but I’m not. I could write paragraphs about how much this boy got on my nerves. This is the one romance book where I didn’t even want the two main characters to end up together.

I know Wattpad books have a notorious reputation for being not the greatest quality, but there are gems on Wattpad if you look carefully. This is unfortunately not one of them. Everyone is written like they have the mindset of middle schoolers, the dialogue is so forced, the heart-to-hearts are awkward and dull. The main characters have no chemistry, all they do is bang and snap at each other for the littlest things. Everyone is superficial in dealing with their problems and I was so over them being immature literally at the 40% mark. I honestly think my favourite part of this was the cover.

If you like smutty books that have 0% plot in them, superficial characters, flat scenes, a poor storyline, and continuous references to what the MMC’s dick is doing every other page (in case you wanted to know); try it.

Otherwise, I would save yourselves a lot of time and find something else to read. My goodness.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley and Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group | W by Wattpad Books for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review!</i>

1 star!

Tropes:
Reformed Playboy
Childhood friends to lovers
Brother's best friend / Best friend's little sister
Sports Romance
College romance

Maddie is a dedicated FMC who is studying to become an oncologist while Cameron is preparing for the NFL but Cameron is also the best friend of Maddie's brother, who happens to be the same boy with whom she has harbored a childhood crush on. The book begins with instant animosity between the characters, hinting at a enemies to lovers vibe, but the sexual tension between the two is palpable. One night leads to another and the two can't keep their hands off of each other.

Sooo I have a few issues with this book. I've read what seems like hundreds of sports romances by now but they still have underlying plots for it to be unique. This seemed unoriginal and very 2012 wattpad. It actually reminded me of Icebreaker- just spicy sex, no plot. They also kept saying how undateable this guy was and but yet there was no reasoning for it and I definitely did not need to read about it constantly. I get it, he sleeps around (which btw, it's 2024, it is very okay to do this). Lastly, it seemed like the author threw in 50 different tropes and tried really hard to make it work, and it just couldn't.

Thank you to NetGalley, Wattpad, and Deanna Faison for an ARC of this book for an honest review.

Such a wholesome and nice read. It reminded me a lot of The Deal by Elle Kennedy, but I still enjoyed.

At the beginning, with all the banter and Cameron trying to break through Maddie's facade I had so many butterflies in my stomach and it hasn't happened in a while, while reading a romantic book.

It was nice to see how these two moved from being enemies to lvers, even though they've never been enemies. The character development was actually good even though some parts felt a bit rushed, like the last three chapters.

I'm really curious to read about Ehan and Maya, eben though everyting happened pretty much in this book.

Thank you Netgalley and Wattpad for letting me read this book for an honest opinion

✨3.5 stars/5✨

This was a cute and quick read. It definitely has some spice but I wish the characters were just a little older. I liked the tension between the main characters and when they were together I appreciated how they acted with one another. I feel like some parts dragged on and there was a lot of miscommunication too. It was a decent book and I’d recommend to anyone who likes sports romances!

Playmaker by Deanna Faison is a captivating read that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish. This book had me laughing, on the edge of my seat, and shedding a tear all within the same chapter. The chemistry between Maddie and Cameron was truly captivating, and I found the flashbacks to their younger years particularly engaging. Faison struck a perfect balance between plot development and romantic tension, and the well-crafted characters made it effortless to become emotionally invested in their journey.

Thank you to W by Wattpad Books for the eARC.

Did Not Finish.

I admit this one was not a winner for me, I DNF’d.

Cameron is kind of a douchebag and used grief as an excuse to be an asshole to Maddie. But also of course he is her brother’s best friend so he’s always around—and despite the fact he wants/cares for Maddie, he sleeps with every other woman in sight?

I’m too old for that nonsense. USE YOUR WORDS, KIDS.

Also, and this is extremely petty of me, but Maddie hasn’t ridden a bike since an accident as a very young teen. But she’ll just jump on a bike and ride because Cameron asks her to? Girl have some self-respect.

Sorry but no.