Colin is brash, bluntly spoken, and very in-your-face. Colin, who is one bad day away from abject poverty, and Lord Andrew Sunderland, of the aristocracy, have more than a little bit separating them - wealth, class, politics.

Playing to Win, set in the final weeks of the Scottish Independence Referendum, follows Colin and Andrew, characters we met first in the story Playing for Keeps. Sick enough that I don't think I spent much time stringing together solid sentences for most of the last week, and there was no way I was going to try to write a review for a book I enjoyed while I couldn't keep track of sentences from one end to the other. I'm surprised y'all didn't hear the squeeing when I found out. I'd put together a mini-review of Playing for Keeps, and it turned out that the author, Avery Cockburn, was willing to send a copy of the sequel, Playing to Win, my way for review. Enough that the prequel and sequel made it onto my wishlist at Amazon within an hour.

Kilts on the cover meant pretty much an automatic go-for-it, and sure enough, I loved the book. Skip ahead about a month, and the ebook I was reading was having troubles turning pages, and then I was on a new reader, because my old one wasn't working the way I wanted it, so I had none of my usual 300+ books at hand, and. I downloaded it, like I do about eleventy billion children's non fiction books to use with our science curriculum, and whatever takes my fancy along the way. Well, as I was browsing facebook, I was linked to Playing for Keeps, which was a freebie on Kindle at the time. I've been pretty quiet lately, mostly just going along, reading things that don't run away, rereading a lot to keep myself from stressing too much, you know the drill.

Playing for Keeps by Avery Cockburn