This is shockingly my first soccer-centric romance outside of fan fiction. It’s also my first M. Ullrich novel. It revolves around national team star Sutton Flores, the captain of the New Jersey Hurricanes and perpetual breaker of hearts, and Kenzie Shaw, a rookie with big-star potential who fangirled over and crushed on Sutton for years before becoming her teammate with the Hurricanes. They meet. They get close. They click. And things really go from there.

I really liked the characters in this novel and there are moments of really well done and funny dialogue (except for Sutton’s captain speeches, which were always terrible), but something always felt incomplete in this story. The sexual harassment storyline, Sutton’s background/reputation, the politics of the national team, the fact that Rhea completely disappears from the narrative... While I wanted a more complete picture, none of this made the story unreadable. I was super invested in what happened and had just the right amount of angst to keep me a little bit on edge.

Conclusion: I am hoping to read more soccer-centric romances and more M. Ullrich stories.