Synopsis

The pressure cooker of minor league baseball leads to major chemistry in this exhilarating, sexy, and triumphant rivals to lovers debut romance.

“Tenacious, sexy, effervescent, doggedly hopeful, and endlessly charming, with characters to root hard for and an irresistible voice—I completely adored it.” —Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White & Royal Blue

Hope is familiar territory for Gene Ionescu. He has always loved baseball, a sport made for underdogs and optimists like him. He also loves his team, the minor league Beaverton Beavers, and, for the most part, he loves the career he’s built. As the first openly trans player in professional baseball, Gene has nearly everything he’s ever let himself dream of—that is, until Luis Estrada, Gene’s former teammate and current rival, gets traded to the Beavers, destroying the careful equilibrium of Gene’s life.

Gene and Luis can’t manage a civil conversation off the field or a competent play on it, but in the close confines of dugout benches and roadie buses, they begrudgingly rediscover a comfortable rhythm. As the two grow closer, the tension between them turns electric, and their chemistry spills past the confines of the stadium. For every tight double play they execute, there’s also a glance at summer-tan shoulders or a secret shared, each one a breathless moment of possibility that ignites in Gene the visceral, terrifying kind of desire he’s never allowed himself. Soon, Gene has to reconcile the quiet, minor-league-sized life he used to find fulfilling with the major-league dreams Luis makes feel possible.

A joyful, heartfelt debut rom-com revealing what’s possible when we allow ourselves to want something enough to swing for the fences.

*Blurb taken from The StoryGraph

Review

This review contains spoilers.

Characters: Gene (POV) as a protagonist brings so much light and positivity to this novel, it’s impossible not to want to swaddle him and protect him from the world. Due to his hopeful demeanor, there is only the lightest of angst in the story, and I truly enjoyed his bubbly personality. Gene has strong friendships, especially with his house-mate, Vince, who also acts a little as a role model.

Luis, the love interest, fits well with Gene in an opposites-attract way due to his more quiet and withdrawn characteristics. Despite a clear attempt to flesh Luis out, he still felt flat to me. This was mainly due to the fact that we knew very little about him aside from what played into Gene’s own character arch. Luis was loveable for certain, but I wish we’d gotten more of who he is beyond Gene.

Other secondary characters, like Vince and Baker, have distinctive personalities and provide emotional support, as well as personal conflict, for Gene. While I really got a bad taste in my mouth for Baker at the end (there’s a a difference between tough love and toxic manipulation tactics), I found Vince to be a great addition to the cast.

Plot: Right off the bat, we get great tension between Gene and Luis. Even better, it’s not strictly the typical “he’s so hot” tension that gets tossed around in romances, but a tension the comes from more personal and professional places. Hoffman did an excellent job weaving Gene’s character journey as a transman with his professional aspirations. It made for a multilayered storyline that had me engaged throughout. The pacing also flowed well and didn’t lag at any point. What forces Gene and Luis to reconcile with one another is also the thing the drove a wedge between them—baseball. I appreciate that Gene takes time to self-reflect on how his behavior may have affected Luis, who is a precious little bundle of anxiety. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb to say Luis might have some neurodivergent qualities beyond his anxiety.

There is a third-act breakup, which is not my favorite, and this is where things wobbled for me. Baker threw me with how hateful she was towards Gene regarding his relationship with Luis. I get “tough love” is a thing, but this just felt like the accusations were intended solely to inflict harm. Even after Gene and Baker reconciled in the story, I didn’t like her. After that confrontation, Gene broke up with Luis over baseball, which I thought was odd since Luis had already said he didn’t love baseball anymore and wasn’t sure how much longer he wanted to play. I’m not certain why he didn’t just reiterate this to Gene? Or why Gene didn’t remember that and sit down for an actual conversation about how Luis felt regarding their relationship and how it might impact their professional careers. Gene, up to this point, was a mature and self-reflective character, so the abrupt end to the relationship felt out of character, which in turn made it seem more like a plot maneuver for typical romance framework than it did an authentic part of Gene’s character journey.

Still, all in all, I was happy to Gene and Luis work things out, for Gene to move up to the majors, and for Luis to pursue the field he was more passionate about!

Romance: This relationship read as genuine and authentic, if not inevitable. There isn’t miscommunication per say, but rather a misinterpretation on Gene’s part as to why Luis acts distant and why he continuously struggles in the games. Gene’s realization that these episodes stem from Luis’s crippling anxiety is where the shift in their relationship begins. They become slow, hesitant friends, and this builds into an intimacy that’s believable for readers. It was cute, but convenient, and I wish Luis had been more fleshed out beyond his anxiety and his struggles with baseball. There were times when it felt like he wasn’t his own character at all, but written solely to play well off of Gene’s character. Still, they are adorable.

Smut: There are some open door scenes depicted in this novel, but nothing overly graphic. They deepen the connection between our characters and elevate their relationship.

Craft: We get solid prose here. Nothing life changing, but the writing was polished and gave voice to the characters and the storyline.

Audiobook: It took me a little bit to get used to the narrator of this audiobook, but once I did, things were smooth sailing! Dasani gives each character a distinct voice and has nice inflection and emotion in his narration.

Overall Thoughts: This a cute little baseball romance that follows our hopeful and peppy protagonist, Gene. I truly enjoyed the sports aspect here, and at no point did I feel overwhelmed by any of the terminology. I will say, having basic knowledge of the sport helps a lot, but it’s not necessary to understand or enjoy the storyline. It just makes it easier to visualize some of the scenes. This has some lovely representation, especially for transmen, and I thought Gene was such an endearing protagonist. That being said, it took me a long time to write this review because, for all that I enjoyed this novel, I feel like something was missing. And that something had to do with Luis’s character. I’m not sure how to explain it, but we didn’t get the kind of depth and emotional intimacy between Gene and Luis that I was expecting. The chemistry felt a little too convenient. We experience much of Luis’s angst via his anxiety and his crisis with baseball, but not much of him as a rounded-out character with loves or hobbies or interests, etc. He felt like a plot device for Gene, which was unfortunate. So, while I feel Gene’s character journey and professional journey were well-developed, the romance aspect fell flat because I needed more of Luis as an individual. Even still, this was a great read and I finished the whole book in a day!

Content Note

You can find more content warnings in the author’s note at the beginning of the novel, at The StoryGraph, or at the Trigger Warning Database

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