Review: Playing Games (Dickson University #2) by Max Monroe

Playing Games, the 2nd installment in the Dickson University series by Max Monroe is LIVE NOW!

Ebook: https://geni.us/PlayingGames_ebook
Paperback: https://geni.us/PG_pb

🏈 New adult standalone romance
🤓 He’s the star quarterback. She’s the cute genius (and neurodivergent).
💘 Opposites attract
💕Intense first-love vibes
🫶 He falls first
🤫 Secret relationship
😂 Witty banter
🔥 Off-the-charts chemistry
☀️ Grumpy x Sunshine (Reversed)
🛡️ Protective Hero

Dickson University’s star quarterback and campus golden boy is used to winning on and off the field…until he meets the one woman who changes the game.

Blake Boden is the ultimate distraction—annoyingly handsome, enigmatic, and confident enough to make my teeth grind.

He’s the kind of guy who could charm anyone with a single smile, and somehow, I’ve become his latest challenge.

Only, I don’t do challenges—and I don’t do love. Emotions? Just chemical reactions. Distractions? Not on my agenda.

But he has a stubborn streak that won’t leave me alone, and I have a dissertation due at the end of the semester on computer-assisted research that I could put to the test a little more.

I’ll analyze his charm, track my reactions, and prove once and for all that attraction is nothing but science…and love is a mere figment of the imagination.

Hypothesis: Time with Blake Boden is purely scientific.
Conclusion: He’s not just breaking my rules—he’s rewriting them.

MY REVIEW

Lexi's a genius, an actual genius. She's brainy, sharply focused, and has never given the golden boy of campus the time of day even though he's been aiming his charm at her for some reason. Now she's become a challenge to him and she's more than up for that challenge. She'll just have to make sure she doesn't fall for his charm, because this genius doesn't understand or do love.

Blake fell in love the first time he saw Lexi. But she still, no matter how many times he trades jabs with her, no matter how many times he gifts her with his charming grin, will not give him the time of day. Oh she'll snark at him when she's leading their college's secret events, but she won't agree to a date, or anything even approaching that. But when she has a dissertation to finish, he finds his in. Now he just has to make sure she knows he doesn't want just a date - he wants it all, he wants her heart.

Oh boy...I cannot tell you how much I adore this couple and their unlikely love story! Blake is quite possibly the sweetest, most adorable Golden Retriever hero I've ever read. He fell in love at first sight with a woman who wouldn't give him the time of day. But when he finally succeeded in getting her attention, did he blow it? No. He became her patient, strong rock, waiting for her to get out of her head, and realize that love wasn't scary. Lexi's inner thoughts had me hurting for her. For a neurodivergent genius, she did not have it easy. She didn't know how to wrap her head around what love really was and wasn't and kept hurting people because of it. Thankfully she figured it out, and gave Blake the sweetest (most difficult for her) grand gesture of all. Dickson University so far has been a heartfelt, sexy series, and I'm impatiently waiting for the next student love story when Ace and Julia are up next, The Fifteen-Minute Rule.