The Deal by Elle Kennedy
The Deal
by Elle Kennedy
Romance | Contemporary
360 Pages
Released February 2015
Off Campus Series #1
Rating: ★★★ 1/2
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Content Warnings
I, like many readers, discovered this book after Amazon’s recent release of Off Campus. I picked this and the next three books up for two reasons: (1) Because I figured the books would lend me some more perspective on what was going on inside the characters heads and (2) I wanted to see the direction the books were moving in.
This book follows Hannah, a college student with a serious crush, one who doesn’t know she exists. Enter Garett Graham, big man on campus and head of the university’s prestigious hockey team. Under pressure to raise his falling GPA, Graham makes a deal with Hannah: If she helps him pass a class, he’ll help her capture the attention of her crush.
At the time of this review, I’ve read the first three books in the Off Campus series. I wish I could say I loved them as much as I enjoyed the Prime series but alas, I did not. And sadly, it feels like the story quality drops quite a bit after the first novel. But let me digress, I’ll start from the beginning.
I did enjoy the first book quite a bit. It’s not the greatest writing but the story felt engaging and the characters were interesting enough. I did get to see more inner monologue than you see in the show and, for the most part, the book and show align. I do appreciate this because I feel like I got to know the characters a little better.
Having already watched the show, the story was understandably predictable but I found it to be interesting nonetheless. The writing isn’t anything amazing but it’s a nice, sports-romance read. It’s trope-y, dramatic, and exactly what you’d expect from a college romance book.
I did end up reading the second and third book in the series which I enjoyed less. The books seem to follow a really similar pattern and honestly, the characters all feel kind of similar after a while. There’s differences, of course, but their personalities didn’t feel significantly different from each other and by the third book I was pretty bored and disenchanted with the series. It makes me wonder if I liked the first book the most because I had the TV characters in my head while I was reading them, which made them feel a little more fleshed out.
While I don’t plan on continuing with the book series, I do think romance fans will enjoy these books. If you’re new to romance and looking for something with a decent bit of spice, you’ll probably like this as well. But for anyone looking for a more sophisticated type of romance, this probably won’t scratch that itch.