Merritt
I’m done with hockey players.
Done with their egos.
Done with their lies.
Done with being the girl who isn’t good enough.
My focus is law school. My future. A life better than the one I came from.
Then I get paired with Bennett Legros in creative writing.
Orleans University’s resident playboy.
The star goalie with a reputation for breaking hearts as easily as he stops pucks.
And the guy who somehow doesn’t remember the humiliating night between us sophomore year… even though I’ve never forgotten.
He’s the last person I should trust.
But when my cheating ex transfers to Orleans University and has the audacity to parade the other woman around, Bennett offers me the perfect solution.
Fake date the campus golden boy.
Make my ex jealous.
Prove I’ve moved on.
No feelings. No complications. No risk.
Except the more time I spend with the annoyingly charming goalie, the harder it becomes to remember why I disliked him in the first place.
And the more real our fake relationship feels, the more I wonder if I’m about to make the same mistake twice.
Bennett
Everyone thinks they know who I am.
The life of the party.
The flirt.
The guy who never takes anything seriously.
What nobody sees is the pressure crushing me from every direction.
My NHL dreams are slipping away.
My starting position is suddenly at risk.
And for once in my life, I’m done chasing distractions.
No more meaningless hookups.
No girls.
No exceptions.
Until Merritt St. Pierre comes crashing into my world.
My beautiful, sharp-tongued class partner.
Oh and surprise…she’s my rival’s ex.
One unexpected kiss leads to the best game of my career.
Now I need another one.
For luck, obviously.
Turns out convincing her to fake date me is way easier than getting her to actually like me.
But the more I’m around her, the less I care about lucky superstitions.
For once, this isn’t about the chase…
The girl who doesn’t seem to want me might be the only one I can’t let go.
Because for the first time in my life, I’m not worried about defending the net.
I’m worried about keeping the girl.
And that’s a game I have no idea how to win.
(ARC Review)
I have been waiting for Bennett Legros to get his story ever since The Bad Boy Rule. With his easy charm, and reputation with the ladies, Bennett has always been the kind of character who commands attention whenever he shows up on the page. So, naturally, the revelation that Orleans University’s resident Casanova had suddenly sworn off women immediately had me wondering what on earth was going on. As it turns out, giving a former playboy a self-imposed celibacy rule only to put Merritt St. Pierre directly in his path was exactly the kind of chaos I wanted for him.
“There’s only one thing that I know better than hockey. Women. Fuck, I love women.”
Merritt is about as far from Bennett’s usual type as she can get. She’s hardworking, determined, sharp-tongued, and completely focused on getting through school and into law school. She knows what she wants from her future because she has worked incredibly hard to create a life different from the one she grew up in. After being hurt by her ex, the last thing she needs is another hockey player, especially one with Bennett’s reputation.
Unfortunately for Merritt, the universe has other plans when the two are paired together for a creative writing project.
There’s also one tiny problem: this isn’t actually the first time they’ve met.
Merritt remembers their encounter sophomore year all too well. Bennett doesn’t remember it at all. That little piece of history makes their second introduction even better because while Bennett is immediately intrigued by the beautiful, stabby woman who seems immune to his charm, Merritt already has plenty of reasons to dislike him.
I think something’s actually wrong with me, like in my brain, because the fact that she’s busting my balls like it’s a professional sport is having the opposite effect on me. It’s turning me the fuck on.
Their banter was one of my favorite parts of The Casanova Complex. Bennett absolutely lives to get a reaction out of Merritt, and she refuses to make it easy for him. The flirting, the text threads, the nicknames, and those increasingly important “lucky” kisses made their relationship so much fun to watch develop. “Stabby Girl” might be one of my favorite Bennett-isms because it captures their entire dynamic so perfectly.
What starts as a fake relationship gives them the opportunity to see beyond the assumptions they’ve made about each other. Merritt begins to realize that the carefree playboy everyone sees isn’t the whole story, while Bennett finds himself increasingly drawn to the woman who refuses to treat him like the campus golden boy.
The first real, genuine laugh I think that I’ve heard from her since we met. And fuck, I’m…enchanted.
And underneath all that flirting and fun is where Bennett really won me over.
For someone known as the life of the party, Bennett is carrying an enormous amount of pressure. His NHL dreams aren’t as secure as they once seemed, his position on the team is being threatened, and suddenly hockey, the thing that has always helped define him, isn’t something he can take for granted. There is a vulnerability underneath his easygoing personality that Merritt slowly begins to uncover, and I loved seeing those layers of his character emerge.
He is also wonderfully self-aware when it matters. Bennett makes mistakes, but he takes responsibility for them. He listens. He pays attention. And once he cares about someone, he makes the effort to understand what they need rather than assuming he already knows. That was especially evident in the way he supported Merritt and her ADHD. I appreciated that her ADHD wasn’t simply mentioned as another character trait; we see ways it affects her day-to-day life and the strategies she has developed to manage everything on her plate. Bennett takes the time to learn what helps her and then quietly begins showing up for her in those ways. There’s something incredibly romantic about being loved by someone who pays attention to the details, and Bennett does exactly that.
And Merritt was exactly the woman I wanted opposite him.
Merritt is the kind of girl you only pay attention to.
She doesn’t need Bennett to sweep in and fix her life. She has goals, boundaries, and a future she is determined to build for herself. Her reluctance to trust him makes sense after everything she has experienced, and I loved that Bennett had to earn his way past those walls. The harder Merritt makes him work for her attention, the more obvious it becomes that this is no longer about Bennett enjoying the chase.
The man is down bad.
Bennett is the epitome of a “golden retriever.” He’s always happy and joking around, wearing the biggest grin. He is playful and funny. And I’m pretty sure he’d have humped my leg already if he thought he could get away with it.
For someone who spent so long being known as the Casanova, there is something incredibly satisfying about watching Bennett become completely focused on one woman. He doesn’t just want Merritt to want him. He wants to know her, support her, make her laugh, and become someone she can depend on. Somewhere between their fake relationship and all those supposedly lucky kisses, Bennett stops worrying about maintaining his reputation and starts worrying about keeping his Stabby Girl.
The Casanova Complex is a slow burn, and the tension between these two builds and builds until that dam finally breaks around the 65% mark. And when it does?
Damn, Bennett. Apparently six months of celibacy gave that man plenty of time to prepare because he came ALIVE. The chemistry that had been simmering beneath all their teasing and flirting finally boiled over, and these two were smoking hot together. The spice was absolutely worth the wait.
“God, you’re so fucking hot, Legros. I hate you.”
But as much as I loved the heat, it was the combination of everything that made Bennett and Merritt work so well for me. They can be ridiculous and playful one minute and unexpectedly tender the next. Their personalities may be complete opposites, but those differences bring out sides of each other that very few people get to see.
Getting to spend more time with Saint, Lennon, Wilder, and Maisie was an added bonus and made returning to Orleans University feel even more familiar. I always love when interconnected standalones give us those glimpses of characters we’ve already fallen for without taking the focus away from the couple whose story we’re currently reading.
The Casanova Complex was everything I hoped Bennett’s book would be: funny, flirty, sweet, sexy, and full of heart. I went into this already loving Bennett Legros, but getting underneath the charm and seeing the man behind the Casanova made me love him even more. Bennett may be known for defending the net, but watching him realize that Merritt is the one thing he isn’t willing to lose was the best part of his story. The Casanova finally met his match, and I couldn’t have picked a better woman for him than his Stabby Girl.
Release Date: August 20th, 2026
Thank you to Maren Moore for the ARC read!