A Slowburn Romance within a Small Town with Ted Lasso flavors
The Long Game
Contemporary Romance, Romantic Comedy, Multicultural & Interracial Romance
Atria Books
September 5, 2023
ebook, paperback, audiobook
384
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A disgraced soccer exec reluctantly enlists the help of a retired soccer star in coaching a children’s team in this small-town love story in the vein of It Happened One Summer—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spanish Love Deception.
Adalyn Reyes has spent years perfecting her daily routine: wake up at dawn, drive to the Miami Flames FC offices, try her hardest to leave a mark, go home, and repeat.
But her routine is disrupted when a video of her in an altercation with the team’s mascot goes viral. Rather than fire her, the team’s owner—who happens to be her father—sends Adalyn to middle-of-nowhere North Carolina, where she’s tasked with turning around the struggling local soccer team, the Green Warriors, as a way to redeem herself. Her plans crumble upon discovering that the players wear tutus to practice (impractical), keep pet goats (messy), and are terrified of Adalyn (counterproductive), and are nine-year-old kids.
To make things worse, also in town is Cameron Caldani, goalkeeping prodigy whose presence is somewhat of a mystery. Cam is the perfect candidate to help Adalyn, but after one very unfortunate first encounter involving a rooster, Cam’s leg, and Adalyn’s bumper, he’s also set on running her out of town. But banishment is not an option for Adalyn. Not again. Helping this ragtag children’s team is her road to redemption, and she is playing the long game. With or without Cam’s help.
“Adalyn Reyes was beautiful. And she was also a hot mess. She was a beautiful hot mess of an inconvenience I wanted out of my hair.” —Cameron Caldani
There is so much to love about this release from Elena Armas. The Long Game combines a sports romance trope within a small town, with hints of Ted Lasso, and it hits just like my favorite grumpy sunshine romances.
The Long Game is my first by Elena Armas. When I was told that Elena Armas writes slowburn romances, I was immediately intrigued. Sports romance combined with a slowburn romance immediately had my attention. Someo of my favorite romances are sports based and written by an author who writes exclusively slowburn romances (if you know you know).
“I wonder who made you believe you don’t deserve to be fussed over,” he said so simply and honestly that I could only blink.
Adalyn is the daughter of the well-known Miami Football (Soccer, for Americans) Club owner. Adalyn has found herself in the center of the blowback from a viral clip of her attacking the team’s mascot. This is where a bit of mystery within the story takes the forefront of Adalyn’s journey throughout The Long Game. Adalyn is tight-lipped about the surrounding circumstances that leads up to the viral video disaster. Ultimately, Adalyn is sent on a redemption mission to a small town in North Carolina. Her goal is to make the local girls soccer club into a winning team.
The roadblock she encounters comes in the form of one former soccer superstar, Cameron Caldani. Not only is Cameron (Cam) a surly coach (Coach Roy Kent—is that you?), he’s also the man who owns the cat who won’t leave her alone, and also happens to live on the same property she’s renting for the summer. Through a series of what can only be described as comedically unfortunate events, Adalyn and Cam are continually put into situations together that ultimately thrust their bonds forged in animosity into the fires of desire and end up hopelessly gone for each other. All of this while having to work together to get these girls a winning season.
“I’ll always give you more than what you ask for, love. Even when you don’t know what you want.”
Don’t forget this is a slowburn. The glances, tentative touches, and the fact that Cameron shows affection through acts of service, whereas Adalyn ultimately needs words of affirmation create such delicious tension and angst. The Long Game plays out until the very last pages and I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence if I didn’t warn readers about the twist at the end that I did not see coming. This twist also sets up the next (standalone) book in the series, which I will be happily adding to my own reading list.
I truly adored The Long Game. Elena Armas writes such strong women, men who are so gentle with their actions but grumpy in their words, and scenes that are so funny that I found myself giggling more often than not, so basically, you need to read this book.
Jes is a self-proclaimed bookworm, who recently moved from the PNW back to the Midwest. When her nose isn’t in a book, she’s spending time with her husband, two kids, and her three fur babies, or exploring the globe. She also firmly believes that you should start the day with coffee, and end the day in bed with a good book.
