Review: Play Smart by Aly Stiles

Play Smart by Aly Stiles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an ARC via the author and Smartypants Romance, all opinions are my own.

This book features characters mentioned in other books in the same universe, but it reads as a complete standalone. If you want to get to know Marcos and Eva you will want to read Street Smart, and if you want to know more about Kaitlyn and Abram you will want to read Elements of Chemistry series and Laws of Physics series respectively. Again this reads as a 100% standalone, but if you want to read about the other characters I like to mention where you can find them.

This follows Nash, a musician at heart who ends up as an intern at a media company. He has no interest in a corporate job, but he needs the money and his roommate hooked him up with the job. Paige was built for this internship, she wants nothing more than to make her mark in the corporate world. She immediately judges Nash because he doesn't look the part of an MBA and future CEO. When they get their first intern project, Nash's music skills are put to good use and Paige is left wondering what other skills he is hiding. He challenges her at every step and it makes her furious. Paige pushes Nash's buttons in a completely different way, once she realizes that he's not the person she expected, she tries to understand why he's hiding his talents. Nash's story is heartbreaking, but he's got a great support networks. Paige and Nash may be opposites, but sometimes that makes for the best story. I loved them together!

This was great! It has a great balance of serious and funny moments. This is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster so be prepared. It has some heavy moments, but it also has some laugh out loud ones as well. If you read Street Smart, you know who Chad is and he is back and he add a nice comic relief to the story. This has some great side characters to help move the story along. I loved that we get to see some characters that we've met before in supporting roles as well as new characters that we will hopefully see more of. I thought Paige and Nash had great chemistry and equally good character development. Neither character turned out to be what they seemed from the beginning. They both have to play parts to protect themselves. The ending to this was perfect! I also love when authors put song lyrics in books when there is a musician, it lets us see a different side of the author. The lyrics were awesome!

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