A review by brokenrecord
Power Plays & Straight A's by Eden Finley, Saxon James

3.0

This was fine, but I think I got a little bored after Grant and Zach actually hooked up. There's not a ton of conflict after that point, mostly Zach just continuously jumping to conclusions about what Grant wants and Grant having to reassure him, and then Grant coming out to his parents, and it wasn't bad, and idk that I would've wanted MORE conflict, but it just felt a bit dragged out when not a ton was happening. I did love the coming out to the parents scene, especially

Spoiler

their dad turning to Seth to ask how he felt about Grant and Zach's relationship since both he and their mom had assumed Seth was gay and in love with Zach. Particularly since I already know Seth is one of the leads of the third book in this series and has a male love interest there, so his protestations about being 100% straight were amusing.

I did like Grant and Zach's dynamic in the first part of the book, although I guess I struggled a bit at times with Zach as a character. I'm just not generally into that kind of character archetype who seems to need constant protection and is easily flustered and all of that. I was unsure at first about Seth warning Grant off pursuing Zach, but I liked how that conflict was resolved, and that ultimately

Spoiler

Grant was just like, "Look, I like him and idk where this is going, but I want to give it a shot," and Seth not throwing a big fit or anything and just being like, "Ugh, fine."

Also, as a side note, as someone who has a BA in psychology, all the psych stuff in this felt very inaccurate to me (in terms of the general concepts but also just in terms of what college psychology classes actually teach). Anyways, this is review feels overly negative, but I did like this well enough to continue with the series (mostly I'm just interested in Seth's book, which sounds more my speed).