You show up for the arrangement and forget about it almost as fast as the characters do. Hannah Wells wants her oblivious crush to finally notice her, so she cuts a deal with Garrett Graham, the hockey captain one failing grade away from losing his shot at the pros: she tutors him, he plays her boyfriend in public. It's a tidy little contract, and Kennedy is in no hurry to protect it. The pretend part starts cracking within a few chapters, which frees the book to chase something better than a slow-burn ruse: two sharp people who actually like each other, fumbling toward saying so.
The real engine is the talking. Garrett and Hannah insult each other, then confide in each other, in dialogue that sounds like two fast minds having a great time, and the alternating first-person chapters let you catch each of them privately losing the argument they're winning out loud. Garrett is the surprise. He could have been the standard cocky jock and coasted on charm. Instead he's kind on purpose: he shows up, he pays attention, and when Hannah sets a limit he hears it the first time. That care turns out to matter, because she's carrying something heavy from before the story starts, and Kennedy handles her history and her boundaries with a seriousness that never once kills the comedy.
When the book turns, it turns on something small, Garrett being steady in a moment he could have skated past, and it lands because Kennedy sold you on him long before she asks you to trust him. The heat is explicit and, better, particular to these two, more interested in what each of them will admit to wanting than in athletic choreography. Not everything around the central couple gets the same attention. Hannah's crush and a couple of side conflicts exist mostly to be tidied out of the way once the main pair clicks, and they clear out a little too obligingly. Next to Garrett and Hannah, though, you barely clock it.
Why you should read
- Fake dating that drops the pretense fast
- Banter-driven new adult with real heat
- A cocky hero who turns out genuinely kind
- Dual first-person hero and heroine chapters
- Found-family hockey-house energy
What to expect
- Explicit, character-first heat
- Rapid, funny dialogue throughout
- A heroine's past handled with care
- A breezy pace once the deal breaks down
The Deal became a word-of-mouth staple and launched a whole series for an uncomplicated reason. It's a romance about two funny people deciding, on purpose and out loud, that they'd rather have each other than win the games they walked in playing. Kennedy makes that decision look like the most fun available to anyone in the room, and she leaves you wanting to move straight to the next couch in the hockey house.
