Review of "The Games We Play"

 Another book down. Reading slump ended. For now at least. 17th book of the year was a five-star read!! Let's get into it.

The Games We Play by M. Hartley is the third book of her Faircloud series, following Mac Ridley, local bar owner, and Penny Hudson, friend of Aspen and Theo. It's stated early on that her and Mac had some sort of friends with benefits relationship, but were carrying this romance out secretly, hidden from their friends, something that excites them from the beginning, the idea of sneaking around and no one knowing. Well, apparently their friends could definitely see the chemistry.

However, it's revealed that Mac had been keeping this big secret from her, which I at first thought it was a secret child, but nope. He was married!!! Because like Penny (oh my gosh I'm just seeing the similarity how funny) from the Big Bang Theory, Mac didn't realize getting married in Vegas was legally binding, instead of a silly joke. Penny (our main character) finds out when his supposed wife shows up at his door to serve him some divorce papers. It's a shock to her, and a major betrayal, and she instantly runs out of his apartment and his life.

Six months or so pass and we're back to our normal timeline, which I absolutely love the whole dual timeline thing, although it was pretty close together to to our present day one, only being months out from these events. Six months of Mac being upset with himself, upset with the situation, upset over losing Penny over something he deemed really small; it's not like this woman was in his life, and it's not like him and Penny were anything serious to begin with. From my understanding, they were just friends with benefits, and then she started to fall. But I'll get into that in a few.

Now, this book has some spice of course, but I was NOT expecting the level of it!!! My gosh. There were moments where I had to pause because it was just so...yummy. Starting out with the fact that he cums in his pants, a microtrope I will eat up EVERY SINGLE TIME!! And don't get me started on the bar scene!!! I will never see a cherry the same way again (fortunately? unfortunately? who knows). I loved the fact that Mac had stated the whole red room scene within chapter 46 is all about trust, something he knew he had to build up with her, even outside of just sex. It was just done so well and so hot and ugh.

Mac is easily one of my top book boyfriends after this. While he has some flaws, like being dumb enough to get married while drunk and being a smoker (which I didn't exactly hate in this sense, but still, smoking is disgusting), this man is a YEARNER. He is more than prepared to grovel, and grovel he does, to win Penny back, and not just in a sexual sense, but in an every day sense. To him scheming with her friends to see what would work to help gain her trust back, and showing up at the library to read to the kids and doing a damn good job at it, and helping Sandy when she had fallen without a second guess simply because she is important to Penny had me wanting this man to pop out of the book. And we all know I love a tattooed man with a slutty little mustache. Can never go wrong.

As for the downsides to this book, while I am giving it a 5-star rating, I did have some set backs. For one, I found it hard to believe these two were anything more than just sex. Penny states that she started falling for him and before it could turn into anything more, is when the whole marriage thing came out. But, even when she was making Mac grovel and work for her trust back, it made it seem like their relationship was mainly inherently sexual. Almost every meeting they had after he had showed up at her apartment demanding her to give him a second chance, was sexual. Not all, I will say after going back, there was quite a few moments they ran into one another and it wasn't just sex. But after some time, I wondered if I was just focusing on that, or if there just weren't as many tender and sweet moments, aside from him showing up to things for her, and making her drinks at the bar.

And I get that little things like that are meant to show he remembers things about her and sees her (oh my gosh the romance novel thing was just *chef's kiss*), but after some time, I came to realize, every time they saw one another after she went up to his apartment, it was all sexual. And I do love it, of course, but as I said, it was harder to believe they liked one another in a deeper sense. I wish we had gotten more tender moments between the two other than small snippets of memories, and him showing up for things, but maybe that's my yearning for physical touch and wanting to live vicariously through that rather than random acts of kindness. I don't know, I'm overthinking it. I have the memory of a goldfish, I forget everything I read the second I close the book. I could be wrong about all of this.

Another thing that got me was, she admits that she's wanting to forgive him before making him grovel. It felt like really low stakes if she was wanting to so easily forgive him and forget everything that had happened. But of course, we also saw her conflict of wondering if she was forgiving him too fast, and continuing to make him make things right and work to gain her trust back. 

ALSO!! I loved that she kept noticing that even her friends wanted them to work out. That even if she didn't exactly feel good about letting Mac back into her life, her friends knew from the start that they belonged together, and that he was worthy enough to forgive if they were helping him get her back. It was just a sweet realization for her and also something that was brought up when she was sent on the scavenger hunt. No group of friends would go through all that trouble in helping him with this elaborate plan to win her back if they didn't think he was going to be an incredible boyfriend to her.

All in all, this book had everything. A tattooed man whimpering, submitting, and groveling, food play, spit play, some angst, lots of fluff, and and the perfect storybook ending that makes your heart flutter and wish you had that kind of love. Safe to say I will be thinking about Mac Ridley for some time after this. Below is my overall rating.