Quick Overview/Ratings
My overall rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ /5
Spice rating: 🌶🌶🌶/5 — a very plot-driven story, but has several well-crafted open-door sex scenes that are integral to the character development
On KU: Yes, this book is available on Kindle Unlimited (as of publishing)
POV: Dual POV (and the audiobook has two narrators — one for each character)
Writing Style: First Person
Setting: Chicago, USA
The Plot of Play Along by Liz Tomforde
The fourth book in this series is Play Along, which follows Isaiah Rhodes and Kennedy Kay.
Isaiah: Looks like a cinnamon roll — is a cinnamon roll.
Kennedy: Looks like she could kill you — is a cinnamon roll.
Isaiah Rhodes is Kai’s little brother — the team jokester and starting shortstop for the Windy City Warriors, Chicago’s fictional MLB team. Kennedy Kay is an athletic trainer, and the only female on staff. She’s really good at her job (read: overqualified) and keeps the Warriors in tip-top shape.
Isaiah loves to see people smile and will do just about anything (even at his own expense) to make his friends and family laugh. And it’s no secret — Isaiah has had a big crush on Kennedy since the day he met her three years ago.
But his dreams of one day wife-ing her up were smashed that same day when he noticed an enormous rock already on her left hand.
As a professional baseball player, he hasn’t spent the last 3 years alone. He has no shortage of women interested in him. But the day he noticed Kennedy’s engagement ring was gone, he became a changed man.
Ready to take his shot and go all in on Kennedy Kay.
But Kennedy sees him as the jokester, playboy, and infuriatingly insistent flirt she’s come to know him as. That’s largely because playfully pestering her at work is one of his favorite pastimes.
Kennedy is smart, driven, and incredibly overqualified for her job as an athletic trainer. As the only female on staff in a heavily male-dominated field, she also regularly encounters old-school misogynists.
It’s clear that her boss, the head doctor on the team, isn’t pleased she’s there. Over the last 3 years, he has gone out of his way to make her job as miserable as possible.
But she knows that by keeping her head down and focusing on her work, one day doors will open for her to get out from under his leadership and do what she loves.
At the end of Caught Up, Isaiah proudly announces to his brother, Kai that he and Kennedy happened to run into each other in Vegas and, after one too many tequila shots, ended up married.
His dream girl is now his wife.
But unfortunately, she’s not as happy about it as he is.
The thing is, she’s the top candidate for her dream position in San Francisco in 6 months, and casual fraternization with the team is grounds for termination. To stay in the running for the position, she needs to keep her current job and employment record clean.
So Isaiah and Kennedy agree to keep the marriage in place through the end of the season.
While Kennedy sees this as a way to keep her record clean, all Isaiah hears is that he has 6 whole months to make his wife fall for him.
Game on.
Some of the tropes (common plot points) you can expect include:
Check the tags at the top of the page for a full list of tropes, but here are some of the bigger ones:
- Fake dating/marriage. The marriage is legally real, but the relationship is fake (at least, to one of them). All Kennedy needs is to hold onto it long enough to get the heck out of Chicago.
- Found family. The friendships in this book fit the found family vibe, with both Kennedy and Isaiah finding people to fill gaps in their lives through unconditional friendships.
