A heartfelt, entertaining story of love and basketball.
In LaVonne’s novel, a basketball player must navigate a career-threatening scandal while confronting a ghost from her past.
When 25-year-old WNBA player Annie Larger steps off the court for an interview, the last thing she expects is to learn that the owner of her team (the fictional St. Louis Arrows) is her biological father, a secret her mother has kept since Annie was born. Shy and conflict-avoidant, Annie is terrified of what the revelation—and the accompanying rumors about how she was drafted and whether she deserves her spot on the team—will mean for her career. Her best friend, teammate, and Arrows superstar Jadea Jones, reaches out to Daniel Chan, the host of a popular sports show, after he publicly defends Annie online. She asks him to profile the team, hoping to shift attention back to women’s basketball. Jadea is unaware that Annie and Daniel dated in college…until a car hit Daniel and he abruptly ghosted her after leaving the hospital. Five years later, Annie is still smarting from the sudden end of their relationship. When Daniel agrees to cover the Arrows, Annie is startled to find their chemistry intact, making his past disappearance even harder to understand. As the scandal intensifies, Jadea proposes a bold distraction: Annie and Daniel should fake a relationship. Annie is stunned when Daniel agrees. Now, facing bullying from fans, shouldering pressure from her newfound biological family, and struggling to focus on the game she loves, Annie must also untangle her complicated feelings for Daniel and find her own voice amid the chaos. Fans of the WNBA and newcomers to women’s sports alike will find this story, with its entertaining references to real-life figures, compulsively readable. The narrative effectively weaves in the inequities that plague women’s sports, providing a strong backdrop for Annie’s personal journey. While Annie’s avoidant, passive nature can sometimes be frustrating (“I opened my mouth to respond, but Coach turned away. I nibbled my lip, torn”), her relationships with Jadea and Daniel keep the story tender and compelling.
A heartfelt, entertaining story of love and basketball.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9798218742553
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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