Book Review: Girls Are Players - Ingrid Seymour

Title: Girls Are Players (G.A.P. #2)

Author: Ingrid Seymour

Release Date: December 1st 2013

Publisher: PenDreams

Age Group: New Adult

Source: eARC from author

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Jessica Norton is a villain in the body of a gorgeous, rich, college girl. She cheats, lies, plays with people’s feelings, and purposely breaks unsuspecting hearts to avenge a personal loss. She’s the kind of girl people love to hate—even if it’s just because she has it all. Except... she doesn’t have it all. What she wants most is the love of her high school sweetheart, Taylor Drennon, the guy who got away, the one who left without telling her why and caused all her bitterness.

Not surprisingly, Jessica’s evil has made her a pariah. Alone, without friends or Taylor’s love, her college life is a nightmare. She’s haunted by her own mistakes and drowning in lack of direction. Something needs to change. So when the first opportunity to turn her life around presents itself, she takes it. Home for Christmas break, Jessica runs into Taylor. His unexpected friendliness seems like an invitation to rekindle their love. Inspired by a drastic idea that will both distance her from her heinous reputation and pull her closer to Taylor, she decides to transfer to OSU where he attends under a football scholarship.

Confident she can regain his heart, Jessica reenters Taylor’s life with a splash. Failing to naturally lure him closer, she is then forced to rely on her old games and underhanded scheming. Though Jessica’s heart is in the right place, it is hidden from Taylor by her blunders. More than once their powerful chemistry takes control, leading Jessica to believe she’s winning. But, it’s a hot and cold affair, and she’s not the only one to blame for their stormy love. If Jessica can only coax Taylor into explaining why he doesn’t want her, maybe she could finally walk away from him for good, maybe she could finally be happy.

(Slight spoilers if you haven't read the first book.)

I had no idea what to expect from Girls Are Players. I knew it's about Jessica, the scheming, manipulative frienemy of the protagonist from book one, and I could clearly remember how much I hated her. She created the Guys Are Props—G.A.P. for short—Club for brokenhearted girls who wanted to get back at mankind by breaking their hearts, because she herself had been burned before, but now we learn just how deep that wound had gone.

With the dissolution of her Club, Jessica is hated and has lost any sense of direction she thought she had. She goes home for the holidays and, dun dun dun, bumps into Taylor, her high school sweetheart who broke her heart. She's obviously not over him, so when he shows that he's still interested, the proactive—and maybe slightly obsessive—Jessica that we met in book one comes back out and transfers to the university that Taylor is attending. He freaks, they make out, and then he tells her to leave him alone. Wait, what? Right then, I knew something shady happened when they broke up.

It was plain to see that Jessica wanted to change for the better but had no idea where to start, and I wished Taylor would just give her a list of what to do so they could live happily ever after. But no, instead he kept on pushing her away and giving ridiculously vague reasons as to why they couldn't be together—which frustrated the hell out of me, by the way. But when he finally did tell her, I thought his reason was shit! It'd been one of the main reasons why I couldn't stop reading, and it ended up having me pulling at my hair. So yeah, I won't elaborate because then this would be really spoiler-y, but suffice to say that that wasn't one of Taylor's shining moments.

Sexy, entertaining, and unpredictable, Girls Are Players gave equal focus to Jessica's road from heartbroken-ness and to finding herself. It didn't go the way I wanted it to but, like I said, unpredictable. This book certainly trumps its predecessor, and my fingers are itching for the next one!

MY FAVORITE PART was strip poker! :))

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