The Deal (Off-Campus #1)
By: Elle Kennedy
Published Year: 2015
Publisher: Bloom Books
Pages: 400
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): She's about to make a deal with the college bad boy...
Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice...even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date.
...and it's going to be oh so good.
All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.
First Impressions
I saw the special edition on the shelf at the library and it immediately caught my eye. I have had this book on my radar but continually forgotten about it. The first cover isn’t my favorite, but the style of the special edition is amazing.
What I thought
I LOVED this book. Flew through it in 2 days.
Hannah is a music major. Garret is the star of the hockey team. Hannah is one of a handful of students who passed the Ethics midterm. Garret is not. When Garret sees that Hannah passed, he tries to charm her into tutoring him so that he can continue to play hockey. She is having none of it, until he comes up with an offer too sweet to turn down. She tutors him, he uses his social status to get her crush to notice her and make him jealous.
This book is sort of enemies to lovers and has the banter that I love. Hannah and Garret’s chemistry was amazing. They both have their issues and it was beautiful watching them open up to one another. I appreciated that their relationship wasn’t surface level and it had me rooting for them the whole time.
The book does warn that rape is a central plot point. I think that Kennedy does a nice job handling it. It never felt overly graphic or cheapened to a plot twist. I also loved the other hockey boys. They were perfectly ridiculous in the fun way that college boys can be. It makes me look forward to reading their stories in the rest of the series.
One other thing I really liked about this book was how Hannah and Garret had their own stories in addition to their romance and relationship. Everything about this book felt fleshed out and not just fluff. While there were some minor things that annoyed me, like the constant referrals to how tiny Hannah was but how amazing her boobs were, overall this book might become a new favorite.
I can’t wait to read the next books in the series. They’re also making this into a show and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m not a hockey fan, but even though hockey is central to the story, you don’t need to know anything about it. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a light fun romance with banter.