Weak Side

S.J. Sylvis — 2023

He’s the hottest hockey player in the nation, and I just agreed to be his fake girlfriend. Theo Brooks is hard not to notice. With his coy smirk, rock-hard abs, and skilled agility on the ice, he’s the cockiest of all the jocks and, unfortunately for me, my new roommate. When Admissions mixes up my first and last name and I end up living in the male dorms, I feel my perfectly tied schedule loosening with every string Theo pulls. And he likes to pull every single one. It isn’t until I find out that my long-time boyfriend is sampling other girls that things get interesting. Theo proposes a solution to my problem—he helps me make my ex jealous, and I help him fend off the relentless puck bunnies that are doing nothing but distracting him from sealing his future with the best NHL team there is. So, we fake date. We kill two birds with one stone. The puck bunnies think he’s taken. My ex is regretting his poor choices. But the more Theo Brooks shows up by my side and places his hand around my waist, the more I realize that the lines we drew are blurring. This may have started out as a fake-dating scheme, but with each misleading kiss, we may both get more than we bargained for. Weak Side is a spicy fake dating/forced proximity college sports romance. It is a complete stand-alone.

Reviews

Priscilla Stanfield@priscillas01

Feb 18, 2025

4/5⭐️ • 2/5🌶️

This was such a fun, quick hockey romance. I won’t lie there is OW stuff that happens in the book with the MMC for longer than I expected but once the main characters plot started happening it was good. I wouldn’t really market this as a fake romance personally. Yeah, it was there but it felt smaller than the forced proximity which it could have capitalized on marketing wise. But I liked the characters, this is an another found family I’m predicting to love, and I’m excited for book 2. The ending was also a little rushed but again this was a super quick read all the way around so it didn’t affected my reading experience to much. As of right now after book 1 another jockey romance I recommend.

Essence@iridessence

May 9, 2024

i wanted to give up reading this multiple times but I didn’t and now I wish i did because it was soooo boring and a waste

Ms. Mint@iread4fun

May 28, 2023

Suffice to say, I wasn’t enthused. Here’s why, in no particular order:

1. Dislikable main characters and a cartoonish two-dimensional villain: Claire is a weak pushover and a disappointing heroine. Little to no character development there, since her internal conflicts are pretty much, and conveniently, resolved by the motions of the plot, instead of her actually learning anything at all. Theo looks down on puck bunnies, claims he dislikes them and has no respect for them, and yet he doesn’t seem to have any issues hooking up with them almost daily? Bruh, get off your damn moral high horse. Chad is a two-dimensional villain. There is no nuance to his cheating ass character that he almost feels like a Disney villain, and worse, Claire lets this dude walk all over her. Also, don’t get me started on the leech that Claire’s mother is. There’s only one word to describe that quick and easy resolution to the conflict between Claire and her mother at the end: pointless.

2. Creative liberty is one thing, but some stuff in this book make me wonder if the author actually had done any research at all? College hockey players don’t get to try-out for NHL teams. They go through a draft, and if the team that drafts them is not the team they want to sign with, well, tough luck. They have to either get that team to trade their rights away OR they need to quit playing college hockey and wait a certain amount of time before (or if) another NHL team will approach them.

3. Remember kids, if you ever get to rent your own place someday, major repairs like plumbing, water leak and floor damage are <i>not</i> your responsibilities to fix. They’re your landlord’s/landlady’s. Again, I wonder how much life experience does this author actually have that she doesn’t even know this?

4. Claire and Theo have unprotected sex even though Claire just broke up with Chad, who’s been cheating on her with multiple partners, and Theo has been fucking several puck bunnies. If you don’t see what’s wrong with this, then I don’t know what to tell you besides please educate yourself.

5. The fake dating actually didn’t start until the halfway mark in the book. I like slow burn—heck, Mariana Zapata is one of my fave authors—but only when it’s done right. This, right here, feels more like an over cooked, tough, chewy, dried out mess of a meat.