My lovely wife is so excited that her beloved England women’s football team – known as the Lionesses – are in a World Cup final for the first time in their history, after Sarina Wiegman’s side beat co-hosts Australia 3-1 on Wednesday in Sydney. My wife has got the drinks and snacks sorted for tomorrow’s match (Sunday 20th August) against Spain. It will mark England’s first appearance in the championship final since 1966, and we all know how that ended!
England women on the verge of world cup glory
The success of England at the World Cup in 2019 in which they came 4th, inspired young girls all over the world to pick up a football and take to the pitch. As they attempted to plant a volley in the top corner, you could hear them scream ‘Stanway’, ‘White’ or even the USA’s ‘Rapinoe’ as they watched the ball fly into the net. Years ago, names like ‘Gerrard’ or ‘Beckham’ would have been the go-to for anyone down in their local park. Now, with the steady improving popularity of the women’s game, girls everywhere have heroes and role models they can look up to and try to emulate on the women’s side of the game too. My wife wishes she was born 40 years ago as she would have made a very good striker! Could you imagine the young girls today shouting ‘Fleming’ as they looked to score the next goal!! That would have been awesome.
Women’s football clubs harbour an atmosphere of inclusivity and acceptance.
After leading her US team to victory in the World Cup last year, Megan Rapinoe stated: “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. That’s science right there!”
Being gay is more the norm in women’s football
Almost 12 percent of the 736 players competing at this year’s Women’s Football World Cup identify as lesbian, bisexual, queer or non-binary. So far, the known total of 88 LGBTQ+ players more than doubles the number who played in the 2019 tournament in France. This reflects the growing ‘acceptance’ in the sport. Most of the LGBTQ+ players are from countries that are more accepting of LGBTQ+ identities, including America, Europe, and the host nations Australia and New Zealand, with Brazil being the most publically LGBTQ+ team in the tournament. The higher presence of out athletes naturally creates an environment where more women feel comfortable being out -‘courage Is contagious’.
LGBTQ+ inclusivity embedded throughout the women’s game is something to be celebrated. We have probably all watched Bend It Like Beckham at some point in our lives and now there is a huge array of lesbian sports romance books to read will the on pitch drama, busts ups, sexual tension lead to an happy ever after?
Why I love the Kindle Paperwhite for reading lesbian romance books
Kindle Paperwhite
The all-new Kindle Paperwhite comes with a larger display, faster page turns, and 10 weeks of battery life – all in a waterproof design with enough storage to hold thousands of your favourite novels.
I read all my lesbian books on my Kindle Paperwhite, I just love it and take it everywhere with me so I can read all the best sapphic fiction book recommendations. With the Kindle Paperwhite’s built-in front light, I can fall asleep to a good lesbian book without leaving the lamp on and disturbing my wife. It comes with Bluetooth connectivity too, so I simply pair my airpods and doze off to a best-selling lesbian audiobook. The display has increased to 6.8″, so it‘s even easier to read, but it’s still super easy to pop in your bag or jacket pocket. The best bit though is that it is waterproof, so when I was recently on holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia I could lounge by the swimming pool whilst still being immersed in a good sapphic book. With 8 GB of storage and up to 10 weeks of battery life will see any bookworm like me through a holiday.
Here are some key features of the Kindle Paperwhite:
- Display: The Paperwhite features a 6-inch glare-free display with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch (PPI). This high resolution ensures crisp text and clear images.
- Front Lighting: The device includes built-in adjustable front lighting, which illuminates the screen evenly for comfortable reading in any lighting conditions. You can easily adjust the brightness according to your preferences.
- E-Ink Technology: The Kindle Paperwhite utilizes E Ink Carta technology, which simulates the appearance of ink on paper. This helps reduce eye strain and provides a reading experience similar to that of a physical book.
- Storage Capacity: Depending on the model, the Kindle Paperwhite typically offers storage options of 8GB or 32GB. This allows you to store thousands of books on the device.
- Battery Life: The Paperwhite has excellent battery life, typically lasting weeks on a single charge. The exact battery life can vary based on usage and settings.
- Waterproof Design: The newer models of the Kindle Paperwhite (10th generation onwards) are designed to be waterproof with an IPX8 rating. This means they can withstand being submerged in water up to 2 meters deep for up to 60 minutes.
- Integration with Amazon Services: The Kindle Paperwhite seamlessly integrates with Amazon’s Kindle Store, allowing you to browse and purchase e-books directly from your device. It also syncs your reading progress across devices, so you can pick up where you left off on different devices with the Kindle app installed.
- Supported Formats: The Kindle Paperwhite supports various e-book formats, including Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, MOBI, and more. However, it does not support the EPUB format natively.
Overall, the Kindle Paperwhite is a popular choice for avid readers who want a dedicated e-reader device with a high-resolution display, adjustable front lighting, and seamless integration with Amazon’s e-book ecosystem.
Audible
Soak in the sun with storytelling that speaks to you. Build a library of your favorite audio content and explore the world of audio entertainment.
Don’t have time to read them all? Why not try listening to these great lesbian romance books? Audible is a great platform for listening to audiobooks because it offers a wide selection of lesbian books, including bestsellers and exclusive content. With Audible, you can listen to your favorite Sapphic books on the go, whether you’re commuting, working out, doing household chores, or simply relaxing in bed. Simply connect your headphones or airpods to your favourite device and you are good to go.
So without further ado, here are my top 15 best lesbian sports romance books you must read after the women’s world cup final 2023.
The list below represents a tiny fraction of my favourite must-read lesbian sports romance books. All my love goes out to the amazing authors, who are paving the way when it comes to genre and boundary-pushing, writing dark and toxic love stories, unlikeable women main characters, or writing a cracker of a sapphic novel with the brightest dedication to love and kindness.
Slammed by Lola Keeley
Tennis champ Elin is used to winning—but not when the woman she’s falling for is on the other side of the net. A sports romance with friends-to-lovers lesbians working out what matters—on and off the court.
World No. 1 tennis star Elin Larsson is in hot pursuit of a record number of Grand Slam titles. But between pressing injuries and growing anxiety, it’s starting to feel like her heart isn’t in it.
Gorgeous rival player Toni Cortes Ruiz bursts onto the scene, chasing her first slam.
As their paths keep crossing in big matches, a growing attraction starts to burn between the competitive women.
When scandals, the media, and the world starts closing in on them, Elin and Toni need to decide whether they’re competitors or on the same side.
A sparkling sporty workplace romance about rivals and romance, and putting everything on the line.
The Unexpected Dream by Nicole Pyland
Mia Landis was so close to being an Olympian. Instead, she watched the Tokyo Olympics and her would-be-team from home with her one-year-old daughter. When Mia heard about a serious professional softball league starting up in the US, she thought it would be crazy to try out. After being convinced, though, she gave it a shot and ended up moving her entire life across the country.
Skylar Donahue lived for the game. Softball had been her entire world until an injury took away her shot to play in the Olympics. She resigned herself to coaching until she heard about a new league starting up. When she made the local team, she had no idea that a new woman in town would completely change her entire world.
Both women dreamed of representing their country in the Olympics. Neither of them thought their lives would take the turn they’d taken. But if they can see past what they thought their lives would be, and look at where they ended up, they might find a whole new dream; one that could last a lifetime.
Books in the series:
Schuss by E.J. Noyes
Stacey Evans wants only one thing: to be the best alpine ski racer she can be. Everything else—like her sweet and ultra-supportive best friend, and hot-but-vapid girlfriend—is just a bonus. Fresh from a medal at her first Olympics, Stacey knows she can only get better and is firmly focused on the future, and totally not thinking about how she’s kind of a little in love with that sweet, ultra-supportive best friend…
Gemma Archer has had a crush on Stacey from the moment she first saw her, but being her best friend is so amazing that she’s almost managed to push that crush aside. Almost. But even if Gemma finds the courage to tell Stacey how she really feels, there’s a mountain of obstacles to overcome—like the fact that Gemma’s stepmom is Stacey’s coach (awkward) and Gemma will be going away to college in a few months. And most importantly…what if admitting how she feels ruins the best friendship she’s ever had?
Schuss brings back two beloved supporting characters from E. J. Noyes’ bestselling, award-winning novel Gold.
Anyone But You by Chelsea M. Cameron
Things are going great for Sutton Kay, or at least they were. Her yoga studio is doing well, she’s living with her best friend, and she just got two kittens named Mocha and Cappuccino. Sure, she doesn’t have a girlfriend, but her life is full and busy.
Then her building is sold and the new landlord turns out to be the woman putting in a gym downstairs who doesn’t seem to understand the concepts “courtesy” and “don’t be rude to your tenants.” Sutton can’t get a read on Tuesday Grímsdóttir, but she can appreciate her muscles. Seriously, Tuesday is ripped. Not that that has anything to do with anything since she’s too surly to have a conversation with, and won’t stop pissing Sutton off.
Sutton’s life gets interesting after she dares Tuesday to make it through one yoga class, and then Tuesday gives Sutton the same dare. Soon enough they’re spending time working out together and when the sweat starts flowing, the sparks start flying. How is it possible to be so attracted to a person you can barely stand?
But when someone from Tuesday’s past shows up and Sutton sees a whole new side of Tuesday, will she change her mind about her grumpy landlord? Can she?
Code Of Conduct by Cheyenne Blue
A lesbian sports romance about breaking all the rules.
Viva Jones was great once. A top ten tennis player with a grand slam trophy to her name, she had the world at her feet. Then an overzealous lineswoman’s bad call knocked her out of the US Open, and a persistent injury crushed her career. While battling to return to the game she loves, a chance meeting with the lineswoman, Gabriela, forces Viva to rethink the past…and the present.
Away from the court, Gabriela is sexy, athletic, and lives for her career as an umpire. She seems to be falling for Viva as hard and fast as Viva is for her. There’s just one problem: players and officials can’t date.
Unadulterated Something by MJ Duncan
Emma Beauchamp and Campbell Jordan’s rivalry on the ice was legendary. Retirement should have closed that chapter of their lives, but when Campbell joins the faculty at Stonebridge—the prestigious Berkshires boarding school where Emma now teaches—it takes on a brand new life. There’s plenty of distrust and lingering animosity, but as circumstances force them to find a way to not only coexist, but work together, Emma and Campbell find that being on the same team isn’t as awful as they’d feared. Will their years spent battling it out for team and country be too much to overcome? Or will they finally acknowledge the truth behind the electric connection they share?
Interference by Zoe Reed
The last thing Jordan Marshall wants is a relationship, especially with someone like Taylor Becks, the star player from a rival roller hockey team. Taylor doesn’t talk – to anyone. When Jordan’s curiosity about the athlete overpowers her predisposition to being guarded, the two strike up an unlikely romance. In the midst of desolation left by being disowned and forbidden from seeing her little brother, Jordan finds that sometimes the biggest risks reap the greatest rewards.
Kick Back by KJ
Sophia Lindstrom plays football for South Melbourne. She’s tall, focused, intense, and has some major trust issues, which she’s currently ignoring. Sophia just wants her life to stay exactly the same, which means playing AFL, running the boutique fine foods and wine store with her brother, and volunteering at the homeless shelter. The same.Cameron Weathers is smart, sassy, also has some major trust issues, and knows she is a great reporter if only she was given the chance to shine. Her sexist editor assigns her the job of shadowing some of the players from this season’s women’s Australian Rules Football League so she can write fluffy stories for the lifestyle page. Not exactly hard-hitting journalism. When Cam and Sophia meet, there’s instant chemistry, which is immediately put on hold when their everyday lives are shattered by misogyny, media manipulation, and tragedy. Cam, Sophia, and the other players discover that football games are not the only contests they need to win. Now they’re fighting for the entire league, their professional status, and even their lives. Sophia and Cam attempt to expose the sinister activities, come to terms with their mutual attraction, and eventually discover that kicking back at those who seek to destroy can open the door to love.
Thrust by Rachel Spangler
Fencing prodigy Jess Kidman has always been ahead of her peers. At the age of thirteen she made the varsity team, won a state championship, came out, and fell head over heels in love with her team captain, Lauren Standish. After being gently rebuffed by the high school senior, young Jess vowed she would return for her some day when their age difference became irrelevant and her own accomplishments made her not merely an equal, but an Olympian. Ten years later, Jess makes good on her promise, but when she arrives back in Buffalo a few months before the big games, she’s intrigued to find that the woman she’s always dreamed of could also be exactly the coach she needs to win gold.
Lauren, however, isn’t the bubbly team captain she’d been at eighteen. After a stellar collegiate career of her own, circumstances forced her to put her dreams on the shelf and return to Buffalo. She’d made peace with a quiet life spent running a rust belt fencing club and coaching kids when Team USA’s hottest young fencer waltzes back into her life. As much as Lauren finds Jess’s confidence and athleticism alluring, she also sees the hotheaded superstar as a threat to the carefully controlled world rebuilt in the wake of the traumatic loss she is desperate to avoid reliving. Never one to turn her back on a friend in need, Lauren agrees to coach Jess on the condition that they focus only on the swordplay and not the sharp point of attraction threatening to sever the bonds of her professionalism.
The two women set to work preparing for the biggest event,but as tension mounts in the lead-up to the Olympic Games, the pressure and the passion building between them also grows, leaving both to wonder if Jess is trying to win the gold, or win the girl.
Hotshot by Clare Lydon
Are you ready for fiery passion, on and off the pitch?
Sloane Patterson is the ultimate hotshot: a US soccer sensation whose arrival in the UK causes quite the stir. She’s got the game, the fame, the looks, the fiancée. But looks can be deceiving.
When Sloane’s life starts to unravel, Salchester Rovers’ new hire, Ella Carmichael, helps her pick up the pieces. But as the lines between their professional and personal lives blur, tensions surface. Now, Sloane’s goal of helping the team win the league and FA Cup has a significant addition: win Ella’s heart.
If you love women’s football, you’ll adore this blistering summer blockbuster oozing with goals, desire, and scorching first kisses. An irresistible romance about the beautiful game!
Lucky Number by Jo Cox
After months of illness, Abi’s desperate to get back to normal. The trouble is, normal doesn’t exist anymore—her clients have all deserted her, she’s back living with her parents, and someone’s even had the audacity to clean the football club toilets.
That’s why when The Blues’ star striker and resident business mogul offers to be her wingwoman, she tentatively agrees. Jenna is bubbly, successful, and irrepressible—exactly what Abi needs. But as the pair grow closer, will they be able to look past everything that has and could go wrong, and take a gamble on all that might go right?
This friends-to-lovers romance is book one in The Blues series.
The Long Shot by A.L. Brooks
A slow-burning lesbian sport romance about taking a chance with your heart.
Talented golfer Morgan Spencer has never won a major but it’s so close she can taste it—no thanks to her sexist father, a golfing legend who won’t even give her the time of day.
Television producer Adrienne Wyatt has thrown herself into her career after her lover left her a year ago. She has a brilliant new plan: a documentary featuring Morgan’s rise and rise, capitalizing on the young woman’s star appeal.
The main problem is that the reserved golfer treats Adrienne’s plan like an invasion of privacy. The other issue is her growing feelings for the irritatingly attractive woman—an unprofessional lapse that would get her ridiculed by her peers if anyone found out.
When things come to a chaotic head, as fierce desires, risked careers, age differences, and dreams all come into play, what will win?
Pas de Deux by E.J. Noyes
Caitlyn Lloyd has the world at her feet. Or more accurately—under her horse’s hooves. With the 2016 Rio Olympics just around the corner, nothing is going to derail her long-held dream of winning a medal or two in Olympic dressage. Not even the reappearance of a childhood so-not-a-friend throwing her perfectly balanced life into disarray.
Addie Gardner’s career is at its peak, and accepting a last-minute fill-in position as the veterinarian for the US Olympic Dressage Team was a no-brainer. The fact that her old crush from Pony Club is on the team is just a bonus. Not a distraction at all. And it might just offer the chance to be friends with the girl who wouldn’t even give her the time of day twenty years ago.
But Caitlyn and Addie have very different memories of their time together at Pony Club and their first meeting as adults is less like a reconnection and more like a butting of heads. With the Olympics looming, they’ll need to set aside their history and learn to work together. And maybe Caitlyn and Addie will realize childhood memories aren’t always accurate, and that they have more in common than they would ever have thought. Maybe. Just maybe.
Out On The Ice by Kelly Farmer
Don’t miss this tender and funny contemporary romance from debut author Kelly Farmer.
Caro Cassidy used to be a legend.
During her career, Caro was one of the best defense players in women’s hockey. These days, she keeps to herself. Her all-girls hockey camp is her life, and she hopes it’ll be her legacy. Sure, her new summer hire is charming and magnetic, but Caro keeps her work and personal life strictly separate.
Amy Schwarzbach lives life out loud.
Amy’s as bright and cheerful as her lavender hair, and she uses her high-profile position in women’s hockey to advocate for the things she believes in. Ten weeks in Chicago coaching a girls’ training camp is the perfect opportunity to mentor the next generation before she goes back to Boston.
Letting love in means putting yourself out there.
When the reticent head coach offers to help Amy get in shape for next season, her starstruck crush on Caro quickly blossoms into real chemistry. As summer comes to an end, neither of them can quite let go of this fling—but Amy can’t afford a distraction, and Caro can’t risk her relationship becoming public and jeopardizing the one thing that’s really hers.
Simply Connected by Alex Washoe
Once a celebrated child prodigy, Blaise Noether is now a struggling widowed mom trying to keep her head above water while she pursues her Ph.D. Only two things make her really angry: her kid’s math textbooks and jocks. In her mind, all athletes are like the bullies who terrorized her in high school. So when she crosses paths with rising basketball star Christie Dillard, Blaise’s interest is a null set. Christie is everything Blaise fears, fiercely competitive, brashly confident, and totally devoted to her game. That she is also endearingly awkward and irresistibly gorgeous is irrelevant data.But when Blaise glimpses a paradigm-shifting epiphany in the geometry of Christie’s jump shot, she begins to suspect this jock might be the missing variable that could balance the equation of her life.
I hope you enjoy reading my 15 must-read lesbian sports romance book recommendations.
Reply in the comments which team you think will win the women’s world cup 2023! Will it be my wife’s team England or do you fancy Spain to lift the trophy? And is there a hot player on the field that makes you go phwoar!!
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One Response
Great list. Have several but always open to new books. Onside Play by Liz Rain was just published last month. It’s about soccer players playing in World Cup. The final game was amazing. Fascinating sport I know nothing about but got intrigued after watching some games. And, the players in real life exhibit what I love most in sapphic fiction, compassion, close friendships, etc. This is the only sport I have seen that exhibits so much sportsmanship towards their opponents. The other sports could take lessons from these ladies.
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