Ursula's Reviews > The Friend Zone

This was a difficult book for me, because I struggled with the hero, Gray, who behaved like an arse far too often and with Ivy, for letting him get away with it when she should have kicked him to the kerb so that he would learn to be a better person. I also found that the juxtaposition of the moral, sexually inexperienced Ivy with the promiscuous, vacuous college girls that appeared in the book too stereotyped to feel authentic. Are there only these two kinds of college girls in America? That's a bit worrying!


At the start, Ivy is living in England for a bit, visiting her mum, and the hero, Gray, is able to use her (pink) car while she is overseas. They start to correspond, and begin their relationship as friends, but he wants more. Problem is, her dad is his sports’ agent and Gray is a man-whore-plus, (frankly, you'd have to dip it in sterilising solution before I'd go near that penis), really living on the surface, avoiding anything that might have him thinking too deeply.


There are clearly a few obstacles these two need to push out of the way, and most of them are to do with Gray. This is often something that I dislike in Romance- the damaged hero saved by the selfless (often doormat) heroine. There was definitely a bit of this going on here. Later books by KC have much less of this, thank goodness.

Why is Gray such a shallow prick? (view spoiler)[We do find out that Gary’s dad and older brothers used to beat up on him under the pretext of toughening him up for football when he was younger (because that’s sure gonna do it). Also, his mother died of cancer and he was the only one in the family who cared for her at the end. (hide spoiler)] This leads to an appallingly cowardly and cruel decision on his part that shocked and pissed me off big time.
Gray does work to banish his ghosts and comes through for Ivy in the end, but I did struggle with his promiscuous past and failure to be a Mensch when he needed to be. He just about redeems himself when Ivy faces another crisis, however, which gave me hope that he might actually grow up and be deserving of Ivy.
KC writes well, as usual, and while her characters are often very flawed, with the men bordering on alpha-holes, the stories are engaging. An interesting addition to the Game On series.