Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Briar Prescott

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Friends To Lovers, Humor, Nerd/Jock, Romance, Virgin

Length: 251 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon.com

Blurb –

What if you accidentally fell in love with the right guy?

Andy:
If my life was a movie, I would be the sidekick. Not an especially promising start when my plan is to finally let my best friend know I have a crush on him. No worries, though. I have a plan. I just need a complete makeover. Change everything about myself so that when Falcon returns from his summer vacation, he can finally see I’m the love of his life. I totally know what I’m doing here.
Well, not really.
If I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t look like every nerd cliché wrapped into one awkward package.
In short, I’m screwed.
But then Law Anderson enters the picture…

Law:
It’s all very simple. I need somebody to tutor my hockey team, and Andy needs somebody to help him with his crush. Sounds like a match made in heaven.
Only the more time I spend with Andy, the more I like this quirky guy who makes me laugh, and pretty soon I’m the one who’s tutoring Andy in way more than we initially agreed upon.
It’s fine.
I have it all under control.
But as weeks pass and the chemistry between us turns explosive, I’m starting to think that I might be in way over my head with Andy.
If only I could make Andy realize that he doesn’t need to change himself for love. If only I could make Andy see that he just needs to be with somebody who has considered him perfect all along…

Review –

Andy has been in love with his best friend Falcon since they became neighbors when they were kids. Now in college, that hasn’t changed. Falcon is Mr. Popular where Andy is the classic nerd. Falcon will be leaving to go home for the summer soon. Andy makes a decision. During the time Falcon is gone he’ll give himself a complete makeover. This means no more sweats and nerdy tees. He’ll finally get his long curly hair under control and by the time Falcon gets back from summer vacation Andy will be a totally different man. Well, maybe anyway. 😉

Honestly, it was like Sheldon deciding he was going to go from being, well, Sheldon, to being a jock. Not that Andy wants to be a jock but you get what I mean.

Law is an assistant hockey coach at the university. Seven of the players failed Physics and are being given a chance to take it again over the summer. Law has asked around but there’s nobody more recommended to tutor the team than Andy Carter. That’s a problem because Andy doesn’t tutor or teach or do anything that involves him being in front of a group of people. He tried that in middle school once. He’s still getting picked on for an incident that happened while he was on stage. But Law’s determined.

It all starts when Andy shows up at his usual spot in library and Law Anderson is sitting there. He’s not even studying. He’s playing on his phone. Well, that just won’t do, so Andy says something. It turns out that Law is there, in Andy’s spot, for a reason. He ends up talking Andy into tutoring him. Law will then go back and teach the teammates what he knows. Okay, that’s not so bad for Andy. What’s even better is that Law – one of Falcon’s sworn enemies because of an old prank between the hockey and basketball teams – offers to help Andy get his man. He’ll help him with his makeover by introducing him to a stylist, someone to tame his curls, and then Law will help him gain the confidence to tell Falcon how he feels. Easy, right?

Not quite.

Unfortunately, Law can’t answer all the questions his teammates have so he has to talk Andy into showing up at the group tutoring sessions. It takes a while but eventually he agrees.

During all this Andy and Law are becoming good friends, even doing things together away from the tutoring. Andy, for the first time ever, has someone he can be his true self with. Even with Falcon – or should I say especially with Falcon – he puts on kind of an act. He’s scared that if he’s too open then Falcon will see how he feels for him, how he’s always felt for him.

Everything changes when Andy goes home for a weekend and is with Falcon and his friends. They’re all at a bar (where Andy feels so out of place) when the guys are talking about a twink who obviously wants Falcon but Falcon makes it clear he’s not interested. He’s not interested because the guy seems too innocent, too inexperienced. This is a light bulb moment for Andy. How can he win over his best friend if Andy’s still a virgin? Falcon only wants experienced guys. He trusts Law better than anybody else so maybe he could talk Law into helping him gain sexual experience too? Law’s all for it, but he’s nervous about it. What if feelings get involved? The way Andy asked him to have sex with him had me laughing out loud. Poor Andy.

I won’t say more or I’ll be giving spoilers.

I loved both Law and Andy. Law was patient and kind. Andy was hilarious even when he wasn’t trying to be. I even liked Falcon to an extent. I felt that he was a bit oblivious when it came to Andy a few times but I never saw him as leading him on or anything. Andy was simply his friend. I actually like how things came together for Law and Andy because it didn’t leave me hating Falcon. It actually had me smiling a bit.

This is a good book but, to be blunt, it’s been done so many times already. The ‘I’m in love with my best friend so I’m going to enlist the help from another guy to help me win him over’. And then of course he ends up falling for the guy who helps him and is suddenly no longer in love with the best friend. In the last one I read with the similar story line it even had a bar scene (like this one) where the best friend made a comment about not wanting to hook up with inexperienced guys. This had the other friend determined to get sexual experience so he’d be ready when he and the BFF finally got together. While I didn’t feel like I was reading the same book (lots of other things were much different), I did find myself saying to myself, “Really? Seriously? Didn’t I just read this last month?” They were both even virgins.

Even as predictable as it was, I obviously enjoyed this or I wouldn’t have rated it 4.5 stars. It got the good rating because Andy kept me laughing throughout most of the book. I adored Law. He was kind and he seemed to get Andy when most others didn’t. In my tags above I listed Nerd/Jock. My blog partner can tell you how much I roll my eyes when I see books with nerds and jocks. In Project Hero it worked because it wasn’t like the others. There’s no closeted jock here who comes out when he falls for the cute nerd in his science class. 😉 They were both out and never really tried to hide anything.

I’ll read more by this author.