Review: Player's Game by Desirae Clark

And when I turned around, I expected to see my annoying little sisters but was instead greeted by a familiar face. In the threshold stood Parker Brady with a devious smirk on his face and the looks of a god.

Samantha Valentine’s life turns upside down when she finds out her family is returning to her old town, Scottsdale. It took her a while to make the city her home, and now all of that is for naught, as she has to learn to settle in a quiet town again.

Parker Brady is perfectly happy to make a mess of his life after his best friend, Samantha, left him. He felt betrayed by his most trusted friend, and now he doesn’t care about anyone anymore. The only thing that matters to him is getting girls.

The two are not so thrilled when they meet after years of being away. Old grudges resurface from the past.

Will Samantha and Parker restore their broken friendship? Or will something else rise from its ruins?

Shona's review 1 of 5 stars

This promised to be a fun young adult contemporary romance but for me it fell flat.

Samantha is written in such a way I struggled to feel any kind of connection with her or her story.
One minute she is moaning about her twin sisters calling them brats, and then when we see them interact with each other one is asking for advise and Samantha is being all grown up and mature and encouraging her sister to do whats right for her. There's nothing bratty about the twins. It feels to me like the author is adding these things in to give the story the edge that its lacking.

And the friendship with Parker??? Ok I understand that since I haven't finished the book there may be information I've not yet seen, but at 40% of the way through there should have been some idea as to what happened to make him not return Samantha's calls when she first moved away, and then when her family moved back and they meet for the first time we just skip right over that meeting and end up sat round the dinner table ignoring each other. What happened??? And then despite the fact that they aren't friends, that they barely tolerate each other, he's taking photos and sharing them with the world as though they are best friends.....

There is a lot of telling going on with this book. The characters have conversations and instead of showing us how those conversation made the character feel, we end the conversation and then we find out how it affected Samantha.