I'm finding that the books in this series are most interesting to me when both love interests grow as characters. Ilya & Shane both grow as characters HR & TLG. Ryan & Fabian both grow in Tough Guy.

In Role Model, Troy grows a lot, and was an interesting character to follow. Whereas his love interest Harris remains a manic pixie dream boy for the whole book.

I thought it was a solid choice to have one of the romances in the series be between a player and somebody who works for their team but isn't another player. But Harris was just so... uninteresting. There was potential there but instead he felt like an NPC rather than a main character.

I appreciated the detailed content warning at the start of the book! Made a big difference for me to know what to expect going in.

I wouldn't recommend reading this book in isolation. If you have (or intend to) read The Long Game it's worth it as background, but otherwise it's kind of bland compared to the other books in the series. I would strongly recommend reading Tough Guy before reading this book, a lot of the context for Troy's character arc starts there.