I received an E-ARC of this novel from the publisher through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
This is one of the quickest books I’ve know would be 5 stars this year. I think I’d read Cel’s grocery lists, and I’ve added them to my list of auto-buy authors. This book felt like it was designed specifically to entrap me in the best ways.
Normally, the title isn’t the tipping point for me when choosing to request a book, but when I saw a queer sports romance, and the title was a Fall Out Boy reference, I was hitting request before I was even fully aware of it. This book is a love letter to fandom, early 2000’s emo, and the ways queer people find each other in any and all circumstances. I had a blast hunting for the hidden lyrical references, but if pop-culture references are something you can’t stand in a contemporary romance, this book may not be for you. This book was so fun and sweet, while also being spicy, and touching on some really hard topics, but I felt like Cel did a great job balancing all of those things to give the book a solid emotional weight.
I see parts of myself in both Caleb Knight and Asher Ross. Reading them falling in love, and choosing to fight for each other, felt a bit like giving closure to parts of my own past. I adored both of them, and their own personal journeys as they came to terms with what it looks like to decide to want something different than what you’ve spent years thinking you wanted. The family they found together with the rest of the roster was such a delight to read about, and I’d happily read as many books about their group as Cel would be willing to write!
If you picked up Chip Pons’s Dearly Departed earlier this month, if you loved Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys, Jonny Garza Villa’s Fifteen Hundred Miles From the Sun, Sophia Gonzales and Cale Dietrich’s If This Gets Out, or Kacen Callender’s Stars In Your Eyes, if you’re a fan of Fall Out Boy, if you’re looking for your next read after Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry, or if the religious trauma aspect of Kiersten White’s Mister Magic appealed to you, you don’t want to miss Hold Me Like A Grudge!