Slow Play by Monica Murphy

Title: Slow Play (The Rules #3)

Author: Monica Murphy

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: October 13, 2015

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Newly broke girl Alexandria Asher just wants to live a normal life. After her parents are sent to prison on embezzlement charges, she enrolls in college under her mother’s maiden name and tries her best to pretend she’s someone else.

Tristan Prescott is everything Alex is trying to avoid. A seemingly egotistical, lazy, rich jerk, she dumps her beer on his head when he comes on to her one night at a party. This only spurs Tristan into action. He loves nothing more than a challenge And the beautiful Alex is exactly the type of challenge that intrigues him.

Despite her reluctance, Alex finds herself quickly involved with Tristan. Underneath that playboy exterior is a good guy, a sweet and sexy guy who she is undoubtedly falling for. What they both don’t realize is the actions of Alex’s parents the reason for so much tragedy in Tristan’s family. And when Tristan discovers who Alex and her family really is, can he forgive and forget?

In the past few months, Monica Murphy has quickly become an auto-buy author for me. I’ve loved everything of hers that I’ve read and I’m always excited to read more. So it should come as no surprise that I dropped everything to read Slow Play on the day it came out. And I don’t regret that decision one bit.

After everything that happened with her parents, all Alexandria Asher wants is to go to college and have a normal life. But going from having everything to almost nothing is hard. But she’s doing it. And it would be going fine if it weren’t for Tristan Prescott, the campus manwhore and egotistical asshole. Alex doesn’t want anything to do with Tristan, but Tristan seems determined to get to Alex. Tristan enjoys the challenge of trying to get Alexandria into his bed. Girls don’t say no to him and her constant rejections just spur him on. Neither one of them was looking for a relationship. But the more they try to resist the attraction between them, the more they feel drawn together. But they post have things in their pasts they don’t want to talk about. When they finally bring it all into the open, Alex and Tristan realize they have a lot more in common than they ever thought. And that might just be what tears them apart. 

I am forever thankful for the Locker Room Facebook group (if you love sports romance, CHECK IT OUT) because it has allowed me to discover so many awesome authors and books. And that includes Monica Murphy. Before joining that group, I hadn’t really heard of her or her books. Which makes me very sad because, of the ones I’ve read, I’ve come to love her books and her writing. I mean, I devoured the first two books in The Rules series. I was really excited at the prospect of reading Slow Play, the final book in the series. From the moment I woke up on the day it released, I pretty much did nothing but read Slow Play until there was nothing left to read. And being finished made me sad because guys, I loved this book SO MUCH. Based on what I knew of Tristan, one of the two main characters, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this story. But I really shouldn’t have worried because it was the perfect story for him and Alex and I loved it. And if you like slow burn romance, than you absolutely NEED to pick up Slow Play. I mean, the title kind of suggests it, this is totally a slow burn romance. There is no love lost between Alex and Tristan when they first meet, and I loved seeing their relationship build and grow. It made my heart happy and I just didn’t want it to end.

From what I had seen of Tristan in the first two books, which admittedly wasn’t really all that much, I didn’t think much of him. In fact, I kinda wondered how I was going to be able to read an entire book about him and see him as a worthy love interest. I mean, the guy is basically an asshole and he knows it. But then I started reading Slow Play and it didn’t take long for me to start falling for Tristan. This guy, no matter how big of an asshole he could be, pretty much stole my heart. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the book and I wanted him to have all the good things. And that included having Alex in his life. Because Alex was perfect for Tristan. She wasn’t afraid to call him out on his bullshit and I was often amused whenever she did so. Beyond being perfect for Tristan, I loved Alex. I loved how strong she was, because it certainly takes a lot of strength to get through what she went through. And I just wanted her to be happy. Preferably with Tristan because they were so freaking perfect together. Also, it should be said that Shep, Jade, Gabe and Lucy are all in this story and I only love them that much more because of it.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Monica Murphy’s Slow Play. this was a story with characters I didn’t think I could love, but I completely fell for them. And you can bet that I look forward to reading whatever Monica Murphy writes next...and go back to read what I missed out on before discovering her.