How You Get the Girl (Love & Other Disasters, #3)

This was my first Anita Kelly book (shock!) and I fell in love with her writing & her storytelling. I'm not always a fan of sports romances, but I really enjoyed reading Julie (high school basketball coach) and Elle (former college basketball star)'s interactions in the basketball setting.

I felt it was a little coming of age with Julie due to her discovering more about her sexual identity and I really loved Elle's story with depression, migraines, and of course her journey to becoming a foster parent.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I can't wait to read Anita Kelly's other books.

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you so much to Forever and Netgalley for providing an advanced copy of this book! All thoughts and opinions are still my own.

This was such a wonderful conclusion to this delightfully queer romance series. I loved all of these characters so much and loved getting to see glimpses of them in this final book as well.

This is following Julie who feels aimless and lost. She doesn't have a partner, career plan, or anything she's planning for. But when she meets her college basketball idol, she finds herself on a path to figure things out.

One of the things I love most in Anita Kelly's books are the non-conventional relationships (not just romantic but familial and platonic as well) she integrates into her stories. They're always complex and messy and feel so very real.

This one has Elle who is unexpectedly the foster parent to her teenage niece after her sister finds herself in rehab. There was so much nuance to this dynamic that I loved seeing explored - the anger, the love, and the fear. And Anitia Kelly handled it all expertly.

I also loved that Julie was exploring her identity and labels well into adulthood. I think we often think of this as a "teenage" thing that happens a single time. However, I think for many of us, this is an ongoing discovery. And even more, I appreciated how much emphasis was put onto the fact that a specific label was important or necessary to your queer identity.

The only thing that held this back from a 5 star read, was the romance itself. While I loved both of the heroines, and I loved them together, I never really felt their romance develop. I don't know if it was because so much time was spent on the other elements or what, but I didn't feel like we had much time with the characters falling for each other. So I was left feeling somewhat emotionally detached from the romance itself.

Anita Kelly is an auto read author for me. Whatever they write will immediately be added to the top of my TBR. And I can't wait to see what they do next!