MM Sports Romance: Tumbling the Cornerback Review
Tumbling the Cornerback by Meredith Spies | My rating: 4 of 5 stars Genre: MM Sports Romance
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Sports? No. MM Sports Romance? Yes.
For a person who has very little interest in sports in real life, I absolutely love the sports romance genre. Football romances are my second favorite sports romance, next to hockey romances. There’s just something about guys sweating it out on the field, usually bashing into each other and pumping out the testosterone, and then hooking up in the locker room that really quite does it for me. Is it hot in here? Whew…
Lucas and Cooper
Lucas is a cheerleader for a professional team who has his eyes set on bigger and better things within the charity and non-profit worlds. It reads like he’s already got one foot out the door, and if it weren’t for the people he works with he’d already be in grad school. But nevertheless, he’s still a cheerleader but doesn’t really care to know any of the players after getting burned. But being part of a charity event with sports players means interacting with them.
Enter Cooper, a player for the football team Lucas cheers for. While Lucas has sworn off all players and has no interest in them, Cooper has actually crushed on Lucas for a while. I find that funny to think about: a professional sports player running down the field when out of the corner of his eye he spots the cheerleader he’s pining over, cheering his name as he gets tackled. One would think a professional sports guy would have his head in the game. But not this guy, heart on his sleeve, he has eyes only for the cheerleader.
That’s not what happens in this book, but my imagination runs away with me. Maybe I should write a mm sports romance.
Back to this sports romance, yes? Cooper likes Lucas, and while Lucas doesn’t “like” sports guys, he cannot deny that his heart goes pitter-patter when he sees Cooper from the start.
Enemies to Lovers? Not really…
The Enemy to Lovers element in this mm sports romance was a bit of a letdown. Lucas and Cooper don’t really have a strong enemy arc. Which is fine. This is a chill, minimal-angst story. But if you want Captive Prince-level enemies to lovers look elsewhere.
Lucas just has no interest in getting his heart broken by a sports guy who will keep him hidden away, and it stipulates in his contract he’s not supposed to date players anyway. And he’s stressed, his family doesn’t approve of his career choice and wishes he’d become a professional ballet dancer. He also has a philanthropical heart and is thinking about his future prospects and going into non-profit work. He’s smart to think about what he’ll do after his days as a professional cheerleader are over. Because that career is a flash in the pan, here today gone tomorrow type of thing.
So being off sports players, I don’t think Lucas even knows who Cooper is before the charity event, not on any real level. But he sure is attracted to him right away, no doubt about that. The only thing he is fighting with is the personal and professional rules against having a relationship with a player. Personal because he’s been burned before and professional meaning it’s in the cheerleader’s contracts that they cannot have a relationship with players.
Sports Lite
I don’t know a lot about football and I’m glad that this book was light on the actual sports elements because I’d quickly get lost in the details if it had a lot of football games detailed at length. As it was, it was a spicy, quick read for people instantly attracted to one another with hot chemistry. I’d read more of this series before I read this, because I see that it’s book #8, and I haven’t read any of the other ones.
I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.
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