Cleat Cute

Phoebe Matthews is up and coming in the world of soccer, on a fast uphill path. She gets to work with her idol Grace Henderson and it quickly turns into more than just teammates. Tensions run high when both girls are up for the a spot on the World Cup team, but both Phoebe and Grace have had their priorities shift and gained a new outlook on life. They have to come to terms with their feelings and what matters most to them.

I had the pleasure of listening to the audio version of this book. Both narrators did a great job and really embodied the characters. Both main characters had some very particular traits that it felt they took into account when voicing them. I do admit the mixing felt a little odd. While I know Grace is a bit more reserved as a character, especially compared to Phoebe’s very out loud personality, her parts had a bit of a muffled quality while listening that was a little jarring as the narration would jump back and forth between their views. This definitely felt like more of a mixing issue that has nothing to do with the narrators’ performances.

This book had a really good balance of sport and other. I enjoy a sports romance, but can often times feel very lost when the sport aspect is too detailed. The author did a really good job of making sure the reader would stay interested whether or not they know anything about soccer. There was never a point where I lost focus.

The main characters Grace and Phoebe were very fun to read. Both love soccer and both play on the same team, but they have extremely different personalities. Phoebe is a tornado everywhere she goes. She’s loud, excitable, and and always going at 100% speed. Grace is so much more reserved, to the point, and prefers to blend into the background a bit. This balance was such a rollercoaster while reading, but in a way that was really fun. I loved seeing both of them grow in different ways because of the other and learn a little bit more about themselves along the way.

The secondary characters were well written too, and there are several of them since they play on a couple of teams through the story. We get to know a few of the characters better than others and to be honest this is really where my only issue with the story comes from. Some characters get built up in a way that seem like they will have a bigger long term impact to the story only for that to not really be the case. A few characters feel like they sort of fade into the background after their initial moment in the narrative. For the most part I understood this, but in a couple of cases it felt a bit off. Overall not something that greatly impacts the book on a grand scale.

The story was very cute as well. To be honest, while the romance was such a huge point of the plot, I really felt like Grace’s growth specifically played a really crucial point. I actually liked this a lot. The character growth was such a well written aspect of the plot. Again, this plays well into the balance mentioned before.

This was a great sports romance with plenty of sweet and steamy bits. Great characters that go through a very engaging plot with satisfying development.

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