Review: The Striker - Book #1 Gods of the Game Series - Ana Huang - October 2024 I'll be honest with you Ana Huang and I have had quite the complicated relationship. Her books have been a bit of a mixed bag for me over the years, landing anywhere from absolute favourites to DNFs (did-not-finishes, for those not deep in the bookish rabbit hole). So when I packed my bags for our Readers Retreat in Taupō last week, I finally decided it was time to give The Striker a proper chance. It had been sitting on my shelf since release, quietly judging me every time I walked past. You know that feeling. We've all been there. And oh my goodness  how did it take me this long? I'm so glad I finally cracked the spine on this one, because The Striker completely won me over. At its heart, it's a football romance and when I say football, I do mean soccer, just so we're all on the same page! Our hero, Asher Donovan, is an absolute dreamboat of a soccer champion who has just switched ...

  Review: Dethroning Crown - Lila Felix - October 2014 Crown Sterling is a soccer god. He has the world at his fingertips or so he thought. One wrong move on the field and everything unravels in an instant. An injury sidelines him, and just like that, the contracts are withdrawn, the sponsors disappear, and the money dries up. Crown finds himself in the middle of nowhere, living in his Uncle's apartment building , an Uncle he hasn't laid eyes on since childhood. Enter Lyra, his next-door neighbour. A model who has survived the nightmare of being stalked, she carries the weight of a scandal that sent ripples through her small town and changed the course of her life. Her relationship with her own reflection is complicated when your privacy can be violated at any moment, learning to feel safe in your own skin becomes its own battle. What unfolds is a story about two people on the edges of their own lives, finding each other and, in doing so, finding themselves. Can Crown and Lyr...

Off the Bench Tiffany Noelle Chacon (Sports in the Sunshine State RomComs, #2) Publication date: November 19th 2024 Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance Austin Taylor, once an undrafted free agent and a third-string quarterback, was never supposed to be the starting QB for the Tampa Bay Bucs. Except now, he is. Dani Marshall, the Bucs’ data analyst whiz, is all in—betting her career, and even her car, on Austin’s success. The real challenge? Keeping her heart out of the game. Austin When the achingly gorgeous Dani Marshall shows up in my tiny Ohio town to sign me to the Bucs, I can’t say no. I expect to ride the bench in obscurity for my entire NFL career. What I don’t expect is to become the starting QB in my first month—or to end up as a viral GIF, tripping over my cleats. Dani’s betting on me, but I’m starting to think her faith might be misplaced. The closer we get, the more her walls stay mile-high—even as I’m being pulled to her as surely as the moon pulls the tides...

Title: #Fam: A Ten Years Later Novella Series: Hashtag #9 Author: Cambria Hebert Genre: Sports Romance Tropes: Football Romance/Found Family Vacation Antics Release Date: November 14, 2024 BLURB It’s been a decade since a jock fell in love with a #nerd, and even after all this time, their epic love story continues. The Hashtag crew is back with all their antics and good times, giving an inside look at what life is like with each other after ten years of football, kids, and family. #Fam is a thirty-thousand-word Hashtag series novella, featuring Romeo & Rimmel, Braeden & Ivy, Trent & Drew, and many more familiar faces! Find out exactly what this crew has been up to and where they are now. #Fam is told in the alternating POV of Romeo and Rimmel and is considered book nine in the reader-loved Hashtag series. Inside #Fam : 🏈 Established relationship 🏈 Found family 🏈 Vacation antics 🏈Football drama 🏈All the feels 🏈 Bromance GOODREADS PURCHASE LINKS AMAZON ...

Review: The Pass Protection - Book #3 CTU Eagles - Alexis Buxton -October 2024 After experiencing a dangerous situation and a nasty boyfriend, Bret decided she needed to get away from where she was living and head back to where her parents and brother lived. She didn't want to tell her parents till she felt safe and was settled in. Bret needed a new start so she also cut her hair, dyed it, and got a few piercings and tattoos. When she arrives at CTU to meet her new roommates, she is in for a surprise and so are they as they turn out to be football players on the team that not only her brother but also her father is the coach and they are surprised as they were expecting a guy named Brett, not a female and not the coach's daughter. One of the roommates is also a guy that Bret has been messaging Crew and could see a relationship with him once she moves past her own trauma and panic attacks. Crew though can't afford to mess up his football career and dating the coach's dau...