REVIEW: The Play by Elle Kennedy
Dear Elle Kennedy:
This is the third of four books in the Briar U series; I gave the first a B+ and the second a B-. This book pairs one of the hockey players from the first two books, Hunter Davenport, with a new character, Demi Davis.
Hunter had a crush on the heroine of the first book, Summer, and when she ended up choosing his roommate Colin over him, Hunter didn’t take it well. He dealt with his disappointment by drinking and screwing his way the first two books. At the end of the second book, his behavior inadvertently led to the Briar hockey team losing in the playoffs.
It’s a new school year, a new hockey season, and a new, celibate, Hunter. He is now the captain of the Briar hockey team, and he takes his responsibility seriously. Hunter has made a vow to himself to avoid sex until the season ends. But being a young, healthy Big Man on Campus, it’s hard (no pun intended) to sidestep temptation. Women throw themselves at him at every turn. Which is why he’s glad to find out that his assigned partner in his Abnormal Psych class for a semester-long project, Demi, is firmly attached. She has a long-term boyfriend, Nico. Hunter and Demi hit it off, but both foresee their friendship as being purely platonic.
Demi is originally from Miami, though her family moved to Boston for her father’s job when she was 15. Her surgeon father wants her to go to medical school and Demi is afraid to tell him that after she graduates from Briar she wants to pursue a graduate degree in counseling and become a therapist. She’s only been with one guy – Nico, who she grew up next door to and started dating in the 8th grade. Nico stayed in Miami when Demi moved but strove to get into Briar so he could be with her. Though they seem to be in a happy, committed relationship early in the story, there are some subtle but obvious cracks in the façade. (And, of course, there needs to be a reason for Demi to become uncoupled eventually.)
One thing I found odd about Demi’s character – she’s described early on as half-Latina and there are frequent references to that part of her background. If anything, I thought there was sort of an eye-roll-inducing emphasis on Demi’s mother as fulfilling the “fiery Latina” stereotype. There is one single reference to her father being Black about a third of the way through the book.
I have mixed feelings about there being no attention paid to Demi being half-Black. On the one hand, it’s kind of nice that it’s not made a big deal of – white authors writing about PoC characters can be tricky. But…my perception of Briar is that it’s a very white place. Ignoring the fact that Demi is a Black Latina felt a bit like whitewashing, especially in light of how much attention is given to her Cuban side. I would have liked to have seen it acknowledged, even if it was only to have Demi muse that she hadn’t encountered prejudice but had been concerned about it.
So far I’ve found the heroines in this series more interesting than the heroes. In this book, I think I can pinpoint why. Demi’s parents appear in several scenes; we learn especially about her father’s fondness for Nico, the friendship between the Demi’s and Nico’s families, and Demi’s father’s hopes for his daughter’s career. She comes off as a fairly well-realized character, with friendships and other interests (e.g. she loves true crime documentaries).
On the other hand, we only hear about Hunter’s parents when he talks about them – they don’t appear in the book. Hunter has trauma especially related to his father – a serial cheater who is more interested in the image his family projects than in the happiness of his wife or son. But it’s a trauma and a conflict that gets very little attention or resolution in the story. It’s obvious that Hunter’s push/pull with promiscuity has some psychological roots in his feelings about his father’s behavior. I don’t understand giving a character conflicts to work through and then giving the working-through such short shrift.
Hunter’s an affable guy but doesn’t seem to have close friendships outside of his teammates nor interests other than hockey.
One other thing that I had mixed feelings about – the blurb gives away that Demi eventually breaks up with Nico and wants to use Hunter as her rebound. As that dynamic began, I thought a lot about how I would feel if the genders were reversed and the hero kept trying to get the heroine to have sex when she had reasons for wanting to abstain.
Spoiler: Show
Things I really did like about The Play – the fact that Hunter and Demi’s relationship starts as a friendship, and builds from there. There’s still a lot of mental lusting, but less than in some new adult books (including other books in the series). Hunter and Demi really *like* each other and that comes through in the story.
The two also share a similar sense of humor (some of it a little immature for me – Hunter’s nickname for Demi is “Semi”, but these are, after all, very young adults). There’s an especially funny sequence involving some hoop earrings, a lost phone, and the two being caught in an inadvertently compromising circumstance by campus police.
This was a fun, not-at-all heavy book that I’ll give a straight B.
Best,
Jennie
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I felt this way about the second book in her Off-Campus series, The Mistake. Logan’s conflict in that book was misconceived to start with–he was going to refrain from joining the NHL so he could work at his alcoholic dad’s gas station in place of his older brother (the brother took it over so that Logan could go to school). This conflict ignores the obvious solution that on an NHL player’s salary Logan could hire multiple people to run the gas station for his dad, but whatever.
What annoyed me even more was that Logan had all the characteristics of a classic enabler and the book never dealt with that. When the gas station conflict was resolved (and all that took was one conversation between Logan’s coach and his dad), that was that. It would have been more meaningful for Logan to attend an Al-Anon meeting (implicitly a first on a longer road) as part of the process but instead his codependency was waved away.
You know, that’s a great point. I wonder how I would feel about that. Sometimes I enjoy these kinds of role reversals–it’s a holdover from at time when romance heroines were rarely assertive when it came to their sexuality. But there have also been times when this kind of thing has really bothered me.
@Janine: Yeah, I remember that with Logan.
There’s sort of a weird approach to serious issues in these two series. Hunter is afraid to join the NHL because he thinks he’ll let the fame and women throwing themselves at him turn him into his dad. But then he falls in love and realizes…that it won’t? He really seemed like he needed to do more work to get over his issues; the “love cures all” trope doesn’t work well for me at this point in my life.
The celibacy vow was similar – and I had mixed feelings about it. I get what you’re saying about liking the role reversal, and generally I like the sexually confident heroines in this series and the previous one set at Briar.
But I thought it was really important for Demi to respect Hunter’s boundaries, because they were friends first and this was important to him. While I agreed that it was in some ways a stupid and meaningless vow, and didn’t really have the significance he imbued it with, I guess a small part of me would have admired him more if he had kept to it.
I agree that issues are swept under the rug in some of these books without actually getting resolved. And I hear you how their friendship dynamic makes Demi’s behavior extra sketchy. Celibacy should have some resolve behind it to be compelling, IMO.
That’s a really good point about Demi being half- Black and that being ignored. Her concern doesn’t have to be heavily focused on prejudice or such, but there should be some reference to her having a different perspective. It is a form of whitewashing is her Black background is ignored.
@Camille: I had to think about it because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t coming from the perspective of “white=default” and that there had to be a *reason* Demi was Black. I actually like the idea that she’s just Black and that’s it; it’s not, as you say, a prejudice focus or something else about her being Black. But then there was nothing about her actually being Black, and in contrast there was a bit about her being Latina, and it just felt weirdly unbalanced.