3.75 Stars

I'll start up saying I loved Bryan and his portrayal. He has such low confidence in himself and that was what made it so easy for his boyfriend at the Raptors to take advantage and really mess with his head. He arrived at the Railer's with the miss representation that they didn’t want him and that he would fail, all the work of the previous boyfriend, so no matter how friendly the guys were he couldn’t believe they actually wanted to be friends with him. 

He meets Gatlin and they start the back and forth that goes with a character that has been abused liked Bryan. The portrayal here was well done, as while I understood exactly what was happening and why it was happening, Bryan’s running and total lack of belief in himself was doing my head in. 

It was on track to being the best of the series as it had me well and truly hooked and then the middle of the book happened.

Bryan suddenly realized that he was being taken advantage of and that his ex was an abuser. WTH – there was no thought process about it, just - he’s an abuser. It was like the authors had a great idea and wrote a killer first section and knew where they needed to be but couldn’t work out a trajectory to get the characters to the end point. It was clumsy and let the book down.

It picked up again after the Railer’s played the Raptors and we really see Bryan come into his own and become part of the team fully.

The relationship between Gatlin and Bryan was good. Gatlin was so patient and understanding, even  though he had his own set of problems and issues. It was good he recognized early what was happening and worked around it.

My heart broke for Ten in this one and I'm going to take a quick break before continuing on