It may surprise you to learn there are eight sports romances on the current (2018) AAR Top 100 List. Five are from Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Chicago Stars series: Match Me If You Can (2005), Natural Born Charmer (2001), Nobody’s Baby But Mine (1997), Heaven, Texas (1995), and It Had To Be You (1994). The other three are: Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy (2015), Kulti (2015) and The Wall of Winnipeg and Me (2016), both by Mariana Zapata.
Power Search tells me we have 144 romances tagged as sports romances, 47 of which are DIKs. Looking at the reviews, it appears our grades of this sub-genre are declining. In 2018, we had 18 DIKs tagged as such–in the years since, they’re been just 11. (It’s highly likely we’ve missed some with our tags, so take that number with a wee grain of salt.)
My personal faves, currently, are Natural Born Charmer, This Heart of Mine, and Bench Player. I also come back again and again to Rachel Gibson’s Chinooks series. For some reason, I’m not a big fan of angst in my sports romances so while I think Kennedy Ryan’s Hoops series is so good, I don’t love them in the way I love my favorite sports romances which blend sex and humor. (Shallow, just call me shallow.)
How ’bout you? What do you think the best sports romances/series are?
I think readers of M/M romances are going to agree that one of the best sports romances series is Rachel Reid’s Game Changers (ice hockey). Other M/M sports romance series I have enjoyed are:
Avon Gale – Scoring Chances series (ice hockey)
Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James – Hockey Ever After series (ice hockey)
Brigham Vaughn – Relationship Goals and Rules of the Game series (ice hockey)
Keira Andrews – Cold War, Kiss and Cry (figure skating)
Eden Finley and Saxon James – CU Hockey series (ice hockey)
Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy – Him, Us (ice hockey)
For M/F romances, I did also like Rachel Gibson’s Chinooks series (ice hockey) and Julianna Keyes’ Bench Player (baseball) but also:
Kristen Callihan – Game On series (football)
Elle Kennedy – Off Campus series (ice hockey)
Hmmm, I have read a lot of ice hockey romances. I suspect they are the most prevalent sport in sports romances then football then baseball?
I have noticed that sports romances reviewed here are mostly ice hockey ones. I was wondering why so?
The NFL is one of the most successful corporations in America–I’m wondering if it’s harder to write sympathetic protagonists because of how the NFL is portrayed in the media.
Basketball is a global and profitable sport; has given to sports lovers many great and iconic players. And no serious romance novels with basketball players. Them being too tall is a deterrent?
I’m not sure why there aren’t more basketball romances. It’s my favorite of the big four team sports to watch!
I’m guessing it’s partly a stereotype about the body type. Romance novels almost always portray the dude being ripped and huge, not tall but with a slimmer build. Personally I am not interested in hockey (the fact that hockey players mostly don’t go to college is a real turnoff for me personally) and would love more soccer romances — seriously it’s the most popular sport worldwide, where the heck are these??? Kulti was amazing. More of those, please!!
Avery Cockburn’s Glasgow Boys series centres around a Scottish footie team.
I thought it might be because there are so many more hockey romances out there so by the math, if AAR reviews a percentage of sports romances and hockey romances are the majority then the reviews will be mostly hockey romances. But I know there are some other factors, such as what is offered to AAR to review.
Pretty much this. There seem to be waaaaay more hockey romances out there than just about every other sport, so that’s going to be reflected in what we review.
Even the one reviewed last week ‘Game Changer’ by Lana Ferguson.
Seconding Rachel Reid, Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy – adding the others to tbr!
“Tigers and Devils” and “Tigerland” by Sean Kennedy is m/m between an Australian Rules footballer and a film critic.
“Caught running” by Abigail Roux & Madeleine Urban is about a highschool football coach and a biology teacher who gets drafted as an assistant coach.
Samantha Kane Birmingham Rebels is a series of OT3 football romances – lots of disbelief suspension rqd but fun.
Alexa Martin’s “Fumbled” is a more serious look at the game, by an ex-NFL wife.
“Winning Ruby Heart” by Jennifer Lohmann is about an Olympic runner and sports journalist, and was well done.
“Ahead in the Heat” by Lorelie Brown is set in the world of surfing (m/f)
Back to ice hockey, I liked the Hat Trick trilogy by Piper Vaughn and Avon Gale, starting with “Off the Ice”.
And not sure it counts but one of my favorites is SEP’s “Match Me if You Can” between a sports agent and a matchmaker.
The Hat Trick trilogy is on sale today!
Fumbled is great! I also loved Long Shot from Kennedy Ryan’s Hoops series. What’s funny is that I can’t think of a baseball or hockey book that stands out to me, even though baseball and hockey are my 2 favorite sports. Actually, I really liked Alicia Thompson’s The Art of Catching Feelings.
Thanks for your recs! I have the Hat Trick trilogy but haven’t gotten to it yet. The TBR is so huge, lol.
A while ago a lot of people were going crazy with “The Cheat Cheet” by Sarah Adams I tried but I really didn’t like how the story denigrated all the hero’s girlfriends as stupid or jealous when in reality the hero is the one who didn’t give them the place they deserved as girlfriends and it’s natural that they wouldn’t like having the best friend of the boy stuck in his apartment 24/7 The girl was obviously jealous of her best friend all the time and he hovered around her but did not dare to confess his feelings to her.
Best friend romances don’t really work for me where the protagonists’ own cowardice means they can’t confess and instead they choose to have romantic relationships with other people to whom they don’t give the affection or time that a relationship requires, and the story assumes it’s cute because those people aren’t “their true love.”
I have a few more sports romances on my TBR.
I’m with you about that particular plot line of “I love my best friend but can’t let them know so I’ll date other people and we will all suffer.” Not for me usually!
Although I have read some that I liked, friends to lovers is one of my least favorite tropes. All too often the storyline is that each protagonist is afraid to make a move because they fear ruining the friendship and there is a lot of mental angst that goes on and on about it. Any romantic relationships they have with others doesn’t work out because they are already getting the emotional support and companionship they need from their best friend. I think it’s hard to do this trope in a fresh and interesting way.
Yep.
I second/third/fourth the recommendation for Rachel Reid’s Game Changer series (especially HEATED RIVALRY/THE LONG GAME). I love K.D. Casey’s Unwritten Rules series of m/m baseball romances (UNWRITTEN RULES, FIRE SEASON, DIAMOND RING, and the tangentially connected ONE TRUE OUTCOME). Casey obviously knows and loves baseball (although the baseball romances Casey co-wrote with Lauren Blakely weren’t anywhere near as good). I loved Cait Nary’s m/m hockey romance, SEASON’S CHANGE, and liked the next book, CONTRACT SEASON, but was underwhelmed by her most recent, LUCKY BOUNCE. And, finally, I can’t talk about m/m hockey romances without mentioning Taylor Fitzpatrick. She recently completed her Between the Teeth trilogy (COMING IN FIRST PLACE, AND THEN, BETWEEN THE TEETH), and it’s brilliant—but rather more the journey of a neurodiverse athlete than a true romance that focuses equally on both MCs. Then, of course, there’s Fitzpatrick’s THROWN OFF THE ICE, the most heartbreaking sports love story ever (there’s no HEA, so technically it’s not a romance—although I’d venture to suggest that the entire book is the MCs’ HFN).
I’ve got the Unwritten Rules series in my TBR and I honestly do intend to read it!
I’ve really enjoyed a number of SEP’s Chicago Stars books but more in spite of the football than because of it. I reread Match Me If You Can on a regular basis. I also really liked the Bromance Book Club which has some connection to baseball. I don’t think I’ve read any hockey books but the books on sale today, the Hat Trick trilogy, sound kind of intriguing. I guess I don’t avoid them but I don’t deliberately seek out sports romances either.
I do have a question though for people who read a lot of them: in M/F sports romances, is the athlete ever the woman?
I’ve read a few with ballet dancers and ice skaters and there are those with two athlete, usually in college.
Sarina Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers is a M/F series about members of an ice hockey team. In 2 of the books (Bombshells, Shenanigans) the female main character is a professional hockey player on their sister team. It is interesting to see the disparity between male and female professional hockey. For example, there is a large pay gap and the female players often have to take on a second job to support themselves.
In Chloe Liese’s Bergman Brothers series, the female main character is a soccer player in 2 of them (Only When It’s Us, If Only You). In Only When It’s Us, the male main character is not an athlete.
The Zapata books have female athletes too.
Amy Andrews has written a number of sports romance series set in Australia, on of which features Australian Rules Football players – Women of W.A.R
I like Andrews’ contemps. Her Sydney Smoke Rugby books are a lot of fun!
–What the Heart Knows by Kathleen Eagle got an A review here. It’s about a former basketball player that returns to the LaKota reservation after thirteen years.
-Windy City series by Liz Tomforde has athletes from all different sports. My favorite so far is the basketball one, The Right Moves. I see there’s a new baseball one out.
–Love Irresistably by Julie James has Cade Morgan, now a US Assistant Attorney and a former football star
–Lady Be Good, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, got an A- here, it stars Lady Emma and golfer Kenny Travelers.
-Kristen Callihan has written some of my favorite sports romances. There’s the Game On series (football) that includes The Friend Zone, involving a pink Fiat and Make It Sweet that has a hockey player recovering from a concussion who makes pastries and an actress.
–Powerless by Elsie Silver got a B+ from me here and has a hockey player and ballerina.
–Anything but Minor by Katie Stewart (baseball) got an A- here.
These are a few of my favorite sports romances.
I was thinking there was a Julie James but couldn’t remember what it was. Thank you!
Football: Alexa Martin’s Playbook series range from good to awesome. She’s a former NFL wife so she knows of what she writes.
Farrah Rochon’s Sabers books are great and so is her The Dating Playbook, a story about a former NFL star and his personal trainer.
I like the first few books of SEP’s Chicago stars series.
IIRC Wyatt from Linda Howard’s Blair Mallory series is a former footballer. Blair is a cheerleader turned fitness guru and she is strong and athletic.
Hockey: Rachel Gibson’s Chinook series is awesome.
Martin writes some of the best football romances in the world.
Totally agree.
I really enjoyed Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus hockey books, especially The Deal.
I think, overall, that the decline in sports-oriented stories is caused by the bandwagon effect. A handful of writers had some success with sports stories, especially hockey books, and a ton of other writers jumped on board. And writing to trends never results in quality.
All good picks; does pro wrestling count? I have a few for this!
Sure!
George and the Virgin by Lisa Cach is so much fun. She actually consulted with friends of mine on this book back in the day.
I’d say that the Chinooks by Rachel Gibson is my favourite, because the sport and the romance is intertwined. But the sport romance that I love most is HEATED RIVALRY, by Rachel Reid.
I forgot to mention Karla Sorensen who writes romances that usually—but not always—feature professional athletes. Her best series, imho, is the Ward Sisters about four sisters, each of who has a romance with a professional athlete from a different sport (football, soccer, MMA, and iirc skateboarding). Sorensen’s heroines are always physically active, so exercise & playing sports are par for the course. She’s also a great slow-burn writer who can really ratchet up the sexual tension. I like all of the Ward sisters books, but my favorite is FORBIDDEN where the widowed hero (who has a young daughter) falls for the woman who manages his gym.
I second the recommendation for this series!
I’m thinking that romances with retired athletes are not Sports romances unless the sport they played is a big part of their lives currently.
Thoughts?
If the retired athlete is still involved in the sport—like becoming a team coach, a manager, or a sports agent, I can still see that being a “sports romance”, but if the retired athlete is no longer involved in any significant way with the sport, I agree that it’s a bit of a stretch to call that a sports romance.
Agreed. Match Me If You Can feels like a sports romance. Love Irresistibly does not.
In Love Irresistibly, Cade has a career ending injury in his last college bowl game which is shown in the story. Throughout the story strangers recognize his name and ask him about the big play (which creates some funny moments). It is also part of the serious plot involving his half brother and his estranged father. I think if their sports career is a part of the story, it should count as a sports romance, even if they are retired.
Hmmmm….. I’ll think about it! We do have a tag for male athlete/female athlete which would certainly work here.
I was thinking the same thing, Kayne. Being part of a nationally known team/being famous for a sport is often a life-long achievement for the athlete and fans and will affect the story being told.
For me personally, I consider a romance to be a sports romance if the athlete main character is currently playing the sport and that is shown on page. Part of the plot is about the effect of the profession on the relationship and the reader gets to see the excitement of the game being played. If the athlete main character retired to a sports-adjacent job but the other character is not involved in any sport, I wouldn’t consider it to be a sports romance. So for me, a hockey coach falling for a player on their team is a sports romance but a high school coach falling for the science teacher at their school is not a sports romance.
That has been my thinking as well.
A couple of thoughts on this one. Dabney asked what is the greatest sports romance or series and there are three series that might fit that bill for me: SEP’s Chicago Stars series, Sean Kennedy’s Tigers and Devils, and Rachel Reid’s Game Changer.
Interestingly, I think the only SEP title in the Chicago Stars series that includes much “during the season” or “on the field” action is the first book. It seems that most of the rest of the titles take place during the off season for most of the “athlete” characters. Does anyone know if anyone else had a huge hit with sports themed romances before SEP? I may be wrong about this, but I think SEP sort of “innovated” or “lucked into” this subgenre/trope/??.
SEP, Kennedy and Reid work for me as “great series” because all of the books in the series worked for me generally speaking, and I regularly reread more than one title in each series occasionally. I adore See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson, but I’ve never been inclined to revisit the books in the rest of the Chinook series. (Maybe I’ll have to give them another look based on comments here.)
As for best single title, I’ve probably reread Tigers and Devils the most often, followed closely by See Jane Score. It still makes me laugh; as does the “cereal killer” conversation in Nobody’s Baby But Mine (SEP). (And yes, the whole set up/premise of Nobody’s Baby is ridiculous and hugely problematic but ultimately I love all of the characters in that book, especially the women: Dr. Jane, Cal’s mom and Cal’s grandma.) And despite many people thinking Fitzpatrick’s Thrown Off the Ice doesn’t count as a romance, it works big time for me.
I’ve read many of the other titles and series mentioned so far but none stand out for me the way the ones mentioned above do. (Although Alexa Martin’s books work as excellent women’s fiction for me. I love her female characters and friendships. The romances just kind of take a back seat to those other interactions in Martin’s books.)
SEP is credited with creating the modern sports romance.
While I don’t love the main romance in NBbM, it has one of my favorite secondary romances of all time, something I think SEP does better than most. She gives women, especially comparatively older women so much agency in this series. Yes, many find some of her plots deeply problematic. They don’t bother me because they don’t bother her characters in the long run. She writes, in general, leads I trust to tell me how to feel about them.
The sports romance may be an American thing unless anyone knows of a romance featuring rugby or cricket. Or (smile) darts or snooker anybody??
We Americans do love our sports! I read mainly M/M romance nowadays and can recommend Jax Calder’s Sporting Secrets series and Jay Hogan’s Crossing the Touchline, which both feature rugby players.
For me, the best sports romance is one with as little sport in as possible!
On a personal level, I don’t care about sport AT ALL, and when a book starts getting bogged down in the minutiae of, I dunno, batting averages or power plays (??), I just glaze over. Partly, that’s because the vast majority of sports romances are US based and so feature sports I’m not even a little bit familar with – ice hockey, baseball, American football – and have no interest in. I recognise that’s a “me” thing. BUT – and I’ve said this in reviews – authors going over the top with the sports minutiate risk the uninitiated reader not being able to work out what the stakes are for the characters – which is a problem, because if I don’t know exactly why winning this or that, or gettng so many pointe or whatever is important to that person, how am I supposed to care about them?
I think Rachel Reid gets the balance about right, and so does Jay Hogan in Crossing the Touchline (which features an All Blacks player) – that balance being that there’s enough sport in the story to justify it being called a sports romance, but not so much that I feel completely lost. I really didn’t like KD Casey’s début, Unwritten Rules (a baseball romance – I gave it a C-) but the 2nd and 3rd books in the series were solid Bs for me and might have been higher had I had the faintest idea of what certain things meant for those characters. Another author I’d add to the list of “romance writers who clearly love and understand their favourite sport but need to dial it down a notch!” is Ari Baran, whose Penalty Box series is getting better with each book (book 3 is out next week – watch this space for my review!)
Rebecca J. Caffrey’s Formula 1-set Pole Position wasn’t completely successful as a romance, but the detail about motor sport is really good – you can’t just write chapters about one guy racing around the track, so the focus is more on what happens before and after, and how a team works, which I found much more interesting than… er… the hockey and baseball stuff.
Avery Cockburn’s Glasgow Lads series is about a Scottish football team (I’ve only read one book so far, but I really enjoyed it). And Fearne Hill’s newest release, Oyster features a world-famous footballer who is also trans. There are on-pitch scenes in the latter, but it’s not the main focus of the story, for anyone wondering how much actual footie there is in the book!
If a character is a former player who still works with a team or club and much of the action of the story is set around that team or club, then I’d say it qualifies as a sports romance.
And it may be heresy, but while I do like Him/Us, Bowen’s The Understatement of the Year is a much better story, and none of them are as good as Heated Rivalry/The Long Game/Time to Shine.
I can sort of relate to this. I love romance novel hockey and have learned quite a bit about the game on the page, but in real life it looks just as weird to me as all other American sports; it reminds me of little kids playing on a half size soccer field. I was seriously underwhelmed by Him, not finding it romantic at all, but loved The Understatement of the Year. As for Time to Shine, the kindle edition is currently $23 on amazon.com.au. For that price, there are plenty of other books out there….
It’s nearly 12 quid in the UK, which puts it way out of my budget range, too. I don’t think you’re an audiobook fan, but if you do ‘do’ audio, the narrator in Time to Shine is superb, and it’s probably cheaper in audio than in e!
I think one of the reasons Him is so loved is because of the audio version. Teddy Hamilton and Jacob Morgan are HUGE names in the romance narrating world (moreso now than ever); Him was their first collaboration, and it was a massive ‘hit’ – plus when it came out in 2016, there were very few male romance narrators around (and even fewer really good ones narrating m/m romance).
Good memory! I have commented here before that I’m not keen on romance on audio because it magnifies writing shortcomings but some writers are an exception; I have listened to quite a few Bowens and enjoyed them that way. Also, I’m really picky about narrators. Even if someone is a technically excellent narrator they have to have a voice and a speaking style that I can listen to for hours. (Cannot listen to Stephen Fry or Derek Jacobi, for example). For that reason I had to pass on Time to Shine after listening to the sample. I adore Jacob Morgan/Zachary Webber’s voice but not Teddy Hamilton’s. Same deal with Cat Sebastian books: I won’t pay the kindle price but the audiobooks all have the wrong narrator for me. It’s very frustrating!
Yes! The man reading the last two Cat Sebastian books (We Could Be So Good & You Should Be So Lucky) doesn’t work for me either! Which is such a huge shame because I just loved WCBSG
He’s done terrific work in a number of Lily Morton’s books and is a hugely popular m/m narrator, but while he’s a terrific vocal actor with a great range of character voices and accents, he doesn’t always work for me, either. Also – I find him much easier to listen to in UK set stories (his English accent is very good) than in US set ones because his American accent grates on me.
Cat Sebastian’s first series was narrated by someone else so maybe they might work better for you. I reviewed The Soldier’s Scoundrel at AudioGals (hopefully you’ll be able to find those reviews here soon) – Gary Furlong was fairly new to narration at the time but he’s gone from strength to strength and is easily one of the best romance narrators out there these days.
The movie Wimbledon is the only one that comes to my mind. Sorry.
I really enjoyed Kat Latham’s London Legends series (rugby); Ruthie Knox’s Ride With Me (cycling); numerous hockey romance by Melanie Ting, Kelly Jamieson, Lynda Aicher, Sarina Bowen, Elle Kennedy, Rachel Reid; Level Hands by Amy Jo Cousins (rowing); the Rugby series by Penny Reid and L.H. Cosway and most of the Sidney Smoke Rugby series by Amy Andrews ; Willing Victim and Brutal Game by Cara McKenna (underground fighting); The Wilinski’s series by Meg Maguirre (aka Cara McKenna) (boxing), the Need You series by Lorelei James (various sports); the Fast Track series by Erin McCarthy (car racing) and the first couple of Play by Play books by Jaci Burton (various sports).
For those interested, I have a sports romance tag on goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/29334580-maria-rose?ref=nav_mybooks&shelf=sports-romance
I hope we have all of these, that we’ve reviewed, tagged as sports romances as well!
There is a new Ali Hazelwood, Deep End, coming out early next year I’m excited for with a girl diver and a guy swimmer. Not sure if this counts but I’m reading a cute amateur sports book, Pickleballers by Ilana Lang, coming this fall. (Pickleball is huge in our area.)
ooh, I’ll look for that Ali Hazelwood one!