Top 5 books with sports

NOTE: This isn’t out until July, but I got an ARC and it is SO FREAKING GOOD!! Highly recommend if you have seen Drive to Survive on Netflix, or know anything about F1. Or even if you haven’t and you love brother’s best friend forbidden romance. I LOVED this book.

Formula 1 driver Dev Anderson’s career is on the line. After a social media disaster leaves him with an angry team and sponsors threatening to jump ship, he needs someone to help save his image. At a party in Monaco, he bumps into the woman who can fix it all. There’s just one problem: she’s his best friend’s little sister. And, okay, maybe there’s another problem — he kissed her last year and hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Recent college grad Willow Williams needs a job. She may have a talent for seeing the bright side of any bad situation, but it’s hard to stay positive when she’s struggling to get hired. So when Dev offers her a temporary solution, she can’t help but say yes. Even if it means ignoring the crush she’s had on him since childhood.

Willow and Dev are determined to keep things strictly professional, regardless of old feelings and the blazing chemistry between them. But in the glittering and high-stakes world of Formula 1, some lines are meant to be crossed…

NOTE: This spot could have honestly been a coin flip between The Wall of Winnipeg and Me, BUT, I feel like Kulti has more actual sport in it is taking the spot this week.

“Trust me, I’ve wanted to punch you in the face a time or five.”

When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. Keywords: supposed to.

It didn’t take a week for 27-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she’d seen in the international soccer icon — why she’d ever had his posters on her wall or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies.

Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who hadn’t known she’d existed. So she isn’t prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team’s season: a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he’d once been.

NOTE: Yes it’s a graphic novel, but this is the highest rated ice-hockey romance on my Goodreads and I’m not sorry. Bitty deserves all the love.

The hilarious and heartbreaking confessions of a figure skater turned collegiate hockey player who’s terrified of checking… and is desperately in love with the captain of his hockey team.

Eric Bittle is a former Georgia junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and amateur pâtissier. But as accomplished as he is, nothing could prepare him for his freshman year of playing hockey at the prestigious Samwell University in Samwell, Massachusetts. It’s nothing like co-ed club hockey back in the South! For one? There’s checking. Second, there is Jack — his very attractive but moody captain.

A collection of the first half of the mega-popular webcomic series of the same name, Check, Please!: # Hockey is the first in a hilarious and stirring two-volume coming-of-age story about hockey, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best four years of your life.

NOTE: OK, so this is kind of weird… but stick with me. Fence as a concept is owned by C. S. Pacat (so far as I can tell). The Fence comics and graphic novels are written by Pacat and illustrated by Johanna the Mad. Sarah Rees Brennan has written YA books set in this world with these characters. These are set in between the comics and material is referenced. It’s a whole thing and I’m here for all of it.

Nicholas, the illegitimate son of a retired fencing champion, is a scrappy fencing wunderkind, and dreams of getting the chance and the training to actually compete. After getting accepted to the prodigious Kings Row private school, Nicholas is thrust into a cut-throat world, and finds himself facing not only his golden-boy half-brother, but the unbeatable, mysterious Seiji Katayama…

Through clashes, rivalries, and romance between teammates, Nicholas and the boys of Kings Row will discover there’s much more to fencing than just foils and lunges. From acclaimed writer C.S. Pacat (The Captive Prince) and fan-favorite artist Johanna the Mad.