Playing By Her Rules

Matilda and Tanner’s second chance love story in Playing by Her Rules by Amy Andrews was truly a fun and enjoyable read. Matilda landed an assignment she didn’t really want a six-part interview with her high school boyfriend, who broke her heart, and is now an elusive sports idol. Tanner avoids being interviewed by anyone in the media, wanting to avoid publicity and just play his best as he captains the Sydney Smoke rugby team. When he realizes that it is Matilda interviewing him he thinks that maybe this will give him a second chance with his high school sweetheart. Matilda plans to spill all the dirt on Tanner, especially since she believes he cheated on her. Instead she discovers he’s not what or who she expected. He has established numerous charities to give back to the community. Matilda also learns that he hurt her so she wouldn’t give up her scholarship to Sanford and a journalism career when she wanted to give it all up and follow him and his rugby career. Tanner is definitely hero material. He’s kind, passionate, caring, and loving. He never forgot her. In fact, one of the charities her established was “Matilda’s Muse”, a writing program for girls, involving local authors to assist those girls. Matilda was raised by her Gran, a real hippie-type, who taught her how to stand for herself. Tanner set the standard for all other men Matilda encountered and Tanner felt Matilda set the standard for the women he met. I loved how these two used twitter to communicate with each other, allowing their followers a peek inside their courtship. This second chance for Matilda and Tanner is finally that chance at achieving the love and marriage they weren’t ready for in high school. Ms. Andrews wrote a wonderful, sexy and emotional story that is not to be missed. She provided a tale rich with sexual chemistry, amusing banter, fun twitter posts and endearing characters giving Matilda and Tanner a chance at finally having the future together, that they always wanted. I highly recommend Playing by Her Rules to other readers.

Matilda Kent aspires to be a feature writer in a newspaper, unfortunately she’s been stuck writing a fashion column when an opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, it’s to do a 6-part interview with the man who broke her heart eight years before: Tanner Stone, rugby hero. Matilda doesn’t have much choice if she wants to achieve her career goal, so she’ll do it, and maybe finally get her revenge on the man who cheated on her. Tanner, while being a golden boy, doesn’t like to give interviews, but because of some rugby players have tarnished the image of the game a bit, his coach orders him to do the interviews. When he learns the journalist will be Matilda, he decides it’s the time to rekindle their romance. Amy Andrews is one of my favourite contemporary romance authors, and part of her appeal, as far as I’m concerned, is that she chooses to remain enthusiastically Australian. PLAYING BY HER RULES is a rather standard second chance romance, but what makes it special is Ms. Andrews always superlative writing. Her style is breezy yet elegant, and her vocabulary is both playful and eloquent, and always clever. The author’s descriptions of the game of rugby, of the sights, of the characters are laser-sharp – as is the Ms. Andrews’ sense of humour. The secondary characters are also terrific, especially Matilda’s grandmother Hannah. The banter between Tanner and his footy teammates is wonderful, and here lies my major problem with the book: Tanner spoke the same way to Matilda, and that stopped me from liking him. Matilda doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, although in my opinion what might have been fun at eighteen becomes rather childish at 26, but then again she didn’t seem to mind, so who am I to argue. Still, I had a problem connecting with Tanner and Matilda for that reason; his sort of humour is not one I particularly enjoy, at least not when you’re talking romance. On the other hand, the sexual chemistry was definitely there, and sparks were nearly coming off my Kindle! There was of course the obligatory misunderstanding – in this case more of an untold – and surprisingly, upon its resolution is where Ms. Andrews merited an extra star because it was resolved intelligently and convincingly, which is very seldom the case in this type of trope. Although I didn’t feel invested in Matilda and Tanner’s romance, I really liked the book because of Amy Andrews’ stellar writing, and I will be looking forward to anything she writes because few authors do sexy contemporary romance as well as she does. I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I would have given this book a perfect rating but the heroine just irritated me to no end. I loved Tanner. there was chemistry between them but I still felt he deserved better. she came across as bitter, immature, entitled, insecure and just annoying. she put everything on Tanner and didn't want to take responsibility of her own insecurities. a book with a terrible heroine is difficult to read. I absolutely had a hard time finishing this book.