Review: Play Me by Katie McCoy

Ella is a classical pianist who is in the midst of an important competition when she moves into her own apartment and meets her upstairs neighbor, hot chef Jake.  Their initial reaction to each other is adversarial laced with attraction, but that quickly changed.  Soon, Jake was wooing Ella with food and Ella was shedding her “sexy nun” look.  But the insecurities come knocking on their door and they both quickly retreat to the people they were before they met each other, saying things they regretted and then wondering how to fix it.

I can say, I’ve loved stories with this same formula before.  But I think what fell flat with this one was how quick the storyline progressed.  Ella and Jake went from being irritated with each other one day to practically the next dating.  With how shy and insecure Ella was, I would have expected more of a fight from her when it came to any kind of a relationship with Jake.  She has panic attacks, even suffered one in which Jake walks into the tail end of it, but that never gets revealed to the guy she’s in love with.  Jake is jealous of Ella’s tutor, yet there wasn’t any kind of standoff between the two, especially given what was said when he discovered Ella and Jake’s texts.  There were just so many different angles that could have been played with this storyline to give it a little bit more emotion and the in for one or both of the characters to really prove their feelings for the other.

The cover and the blurb pulled me in on this one, but the story of pianist Ella and hot ass chef Jake fell flat.