1/31/2024 update: The longer I sit with this book, the more I think I hated every aspect of it. It's not longer 1.5 stars, but 1 star.

I struggled with how to rate this for a long time. 1 star seems harsh, but 2 stars seems generous. Usually when I rate something 2 stars, I at least enjoyed some aspect of the story... but here, it was hard to enjoy anything. The Long Game sure felt long, and that's with me heavily skimming and even skipping some parts of the book (mostly the smut, which was not good). So, 1.5 stars feels appropriate. I have three major gripes about this book, which I will outline below.

Strike one: The premise of this book is so stupid that I can't take anything seriously. You're telling me

a video of a women flinging off the head of a mascot in anger

is really a gigantic PR nightmare that could ruin a big time soccer club? Give me a fucking break. Matthew was right in the beginning—her dad was

being a little bitch and overreacting

. It's completely unrealistic that 1) the video would've become a big deal in the first place, given that the Miami Flames are, apparently,

the worst and the most unpopular team in the MLS

, 2) that a dumb meme video of that nature would stay in the cultural zeitgeist long enough to spawn physical merch and for advertising to center around it—also, big tangent here, but

it would literally be illegal for companies to just use her face like that! It's her likeness; even if someone is a meme, you cannot use their face for advertising like that without permission! This annoyed me so bad, maybe more than anything else in the book

, and 3) that a video like that couldn't be turned around for good publicity. Like, lean into it, call her the Phoenix Slayer or something, do some funny videos on TikTok and get some engagement. Why would you send her away like she's a bastard child (more on this later) for a slightly embarrassing video? Weird AF behavior.

Strike two: None of these characters are fleshed out. They do not feel like real people. They are charicatures with two dimensions at best. The reason that Cameron and Adalyn start off as "enemies" is dumb as hell, but what is even dumber is how quickly it takes them to become absolutely obsessed with each other (and not in a good or healthy way).

The constant darling and love shit from Cameron really gave me the ick, especially because he started it before they even liked each other and it's established that Adalyn doesn't like terms of endearment like that, yet he does it anyway.

The switch from them not being able to stand each other to literally saying I love you is like three days. Chill the fuck out y'all! And their respective friends (Liam and Matthew) literally do nothing but provide the next plot point. Matthew in particular is bad about this, and on top of it all, he's really bad at his job of being a plot dumper.

Every time Matthew and Adalyn talk, he always has something "really important" to tell her that just... never gets said. Like, don't you think telling Adalyn that her dad is selling the Miami Flames is more important than freaking out about ~Cameron Caldani~ to his face? Do you not care about your friend? And then you send her that news in an email afterwards instead of on the call? BE SO FUCKING FOR REAL RIGHT NOW.

And don't even get me started on the girls. I cannot stand the "wise beyond their years" child trope, and it was used extremely heavily here, especially with María. No child is saying all that about romantic love. She is nine, she doesn't even know what that is!

Strike three: The third act conflict sucks. I hate that they have to exist in the first place, but this was truly a stinker. A fresh cow patty on top of a pile of manure.

Cameron literally knew this rumor for a literal day and Adalyn reacts like he doesn't believe she can take care of herself or trust her? Okay girl. You're definitely sane. And the half-sister twist? God, just fucking kill me now. It's a bad twist because there's nothing the reader could have done to predict it. And how would her father possibly have expected her to "put that together"?

I don't know, the plot of this book was all at once boring and frustrating and required the kind of suspension of disbelief that makes my teeth ache from grinding them so much.

Finally, this is more like a foul than a strike (yes, I'm using baseball terms and I don't care), but there's quite a lot of editing errors in this book. This is a traditionally published book instead of an indie or self-published one (I can usually overlook editing errors in those more), so I expect more. For example, early on Pierogi is referred to as a boy cat, but then later in the book, is referrenced as a girl alongside Willow. I don't know if Pierogi was originaly meant to be a boy or what, but this kind of thing should have definitely been caught in the editing process.

Wow. Looking back, I ranted so much. Sorry about that. TL;DR: I think the premise of the book sucks, I don't like any of the characters, and this is a horrible execution of the enemies-to-lovers trope. If you have liked this author's previous work, you might like this and I don't want to discourage you from trying to read this book. But if not, you can skip this and have the peace of mind that you're not missing much.

P.S. I wasn't sure where to fit this in, but the audiobook for this is so bad. I genuinely cringed several times while listening to it, and eventually had to switch off it all together so I could get through the book. The English accent the female narrator did for Cameron gave me literal hives. They already hired a male narrator—just have him read the lines! It's not that hard! Anyway, I highly recommend stearing clear of it.