A review by bookishblasian
Pick Six by Maggie Rawdon

4.0

The NFL season starts this week and I just knew I had to read a football romance to get me ready for the season. This series came highly recommended to me by some friends on booksta. I wasn’t super in love with the cover or the synopsis, but I knew I was going to enjoy the book right from the start. I did see a review mention the short story prequel so I did go back and read that. It’s not required, but it definitely gave me some added context that was much appreciated here. Harper and Alex have CHEMISTRY. You could tell immediately in the short story and you could still tell here. I wasn’t sure how I would feel bout the ex’s best friend storyline, it feels icky, but it’s less weird here. Alex and Drew are supposedly besties, but Drew is also Alex’s agent. I feel like that professional relationship gave them less of a friendship. They also don’t behave like friends hardly at all in this book. I am such a sucker for fake dating books, but the reason to actually fake date only half makes sense here. It just seems like they are reaching for a reason to fake date. I didn’t mind it though. For most of the book, I honestly forgot they were fake dating. In the beginning, there was a lot of fake dating logistics planning. Throughout the book though, it just felt like a regular relationship. After their first photo op, I don’t remember any other staged outings for their act. I guess their history helps with that, but it really just seemed like they were actually dating. I DIED every time Alex admitted to his feelings for her over the years. All the times he was a gentleman but not thinking gentlemanly thoughts. All the times that he stayed loyal to Drew instead of going after the girl he met first all those years ago. With all of the chemistry between these two, the steam was STEAMY! At times I did want just a smidge more. Sometimes it felt like a lot of foreplay with an abrupt ending, but it was still overall top notch lol I enjoyed this whole book, but the conflict left something to be desired. It was all too much. I figured the conflict would involve the ex, but this kinda took it to an extreme that was a little unrealistic. It just annoyed me and I wanted to move past it as quickly as possible. Without giving too much away, Alex asks for help with the conflict, gets the help, but we never learn what the help is or any details about it. And one other thing that I wanted more of that I didn’t get was when Gabe lets Harper in on that little secret about Alex. I thought we would’ve gotten more action from that but we didn’t! I was a little disappointed. Despite my complaints, I really enjoyed my first book in this series. I’m looking forwarding to continuing it, and I’m super interested in Tobias’ book!