The Dating Playbook

Taylor Powell is a talented personal trainer who is going through some rough financial times. Jamar Dixon is a former NFL player who wants to train his way back into the NFL and wants Taylor to be his new trainer. However, he wants to keep things a secret, and they soon get accidentally outed as a couple.

I absolutely love love LOVED the friendship between Taylor, London, and Samiah. Sometimes solid friendships are formed super quickly, and I appreciate both the wacky circumstance in which the three of them met and the way that they decided not to let that get in between them and formed a strong friendship that way. Seeing how they reacted to Taylor's confession of her financial situation despite only having known each other for three months tells me how much of that ride-or-die kind of friendship is here, and I love seeing that. I love learning about each of the three girls and their pursuits of milestones in their very different careers, and the way they uplift each other and hold each other accountable. I'm interested to see London's story in the next book.

I enjoyed Taylor and Jamar's dynamic - cynical about love meets sunshine, with plenty of banter between the two. Combined with fake dating and huddling for warmth? Their romance was so much fun to read. I loved their grocery store "date" - whirlwind fantastical dates are always fun to read, but there's something charming about the domesticity in this scene. It very much feels like something you'd see these characters do as a well-established relationship far off in the future.

I also loved all the more serious themes that were discussed in the book. Taylor's anxiety, especially when compared to family members or her more successful friends, and the effects it might have on her relationships with those people in question were done really well. There was a great exploration of grief in various forms that it might take - loss of a loved one, loss of a dream, and how to grapple with these feelings and try to move forward, however that might look for different people. Seeing a character with a learning disability, especially one who is diagnosed as an adult, was also something that isn't represented very often, and I appreciate that it was shown here.

Thank you to Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and NetGalley for the ARC.