Rating: 3.5/5 Heat Level: 3.5/5 Pub Date: April 7th

My review:

This is a sapphic rivals-to-lovers tennis romance, pretty light on the rivalry despite Inés and Chloe being rivals pretty much this entire book, and fairly heavy on the lovers.

Inés and Chloe start off on pretty bad terms: not only are they pro-tennis rivals, but have History from when they made out at a party, Chloe got her number, and NEVER TEXTED HER BACK… and then Chloe stripped Inés of her French Open title, and took her sponsor. Not (all) on purpose, but no wonder Inés is salty! Normally, I love reading hella beef between the main characters, but despite Chloe fucking Inés over, consciously or not, the tension that should have been there just… wasn’t present. Inés comes off as bitter (And if's valid of her to hold that grudge! Though it's equally valid for her friends to question why she holds it, when they've also been fucked with by Chloe lol), and Chloe’s POV is purely apologetic and sad. It’s all very tepid.

Inés and Chloe do eventually become friends and partners, since Chloe hires Inés to help her train. This isn’t slow burn by any means, but the length of this paperback is 384 pages and every minutiae of the build-up over the course of training feels dragged out. As their (secret) relationship heats up and media scrutiny increases as well, I did think it was interesting that it's less the actual homophobia that's stopping Inés and Chloe from coming out about their relationship, but rather, how it could impact their respective careers. To be clear, there is homophobia within the tennis fandom, and specifically biphobia aimed at Chloe, but there's other things at stake as well.

The sex:

I thought the sex scenes were solid and on par for your average contemporary romance as of now— there's a decent amount of desperation and impatient masturbation and mutual masturbation moments. I also likes the use of the word UNHINGED during. Favorite scene was probably their competitive sex scene during the US Open in an abandoned physio room lolol. Exactly the kind of content I'm here for in sports romances.

Overall:

Even with a reasonably dramatic climax at the US Open (no spoilers but it's exactly what you think), this story just didn't deliver on what I wanted. Sports romances to me should be reasonably fast-paced, with plenty of tension and in this case, these women are literal rivals! That should absolutely have been played up more, though obviously not at the cost of a solid HEA, or even them getting together a little more than halfway into the book. But even the external attempts at plot and drama— the press leaks, fake doping allegations, and literal assault— couldn't save the story for me.

A final note— I deeply dislike authors listing the chapters where there are sex scenes, like this author did. It promotes the idea that the sex is skippable vs. being an equally vital part of their love story and necessary for romantic development.

Thank you to Avon and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Well that was not love, that was lust. The writing also felt a bit lazy at times "they talked about lot of things" yeah?? like what, bc I don't believe you. So if you want to read a book where there is a lot of lust, this is for you.