By Cat Sebastian
Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
Spice rating: 🌶️🌶️
Blurb
An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.
The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.
Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.
Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.
Genre: Historical Romance
Read if you Like:
🗞️ Black cat golden retriever
🗞️ 1960s setting
🗞️ Baseball romance
🗞️ New York setting
🗞️ MM romance
My Thoughts:
I have read other Cat Sebastian romances so when I saw the newest one was going to be grumpy sunshine I knew I had to read it!
This one took a minute for me to get into. The characters both started out in a bad place making the beginning a bit depressing. However, I'm really glad I stuck with it! I feel like Mark and Eddie are the definition of black cat and golden retriever. Eddie has such a big heart and while Mark is a bit more prickly. I had such a fun time reading about Mark being discerning (he'd definitely not a snob) and watching Eddie make fun of him about it.
I ended up really liking Eddie and Mark's relationship but it is hard to read a queer romance set in a time when the characters can't have a happily ever after where they live openly together. I have read some Regency queer romances (including others by Cat Sebastian) but for some reason, it was a little harder for me knowing they were so close to a time when they could have lived openly together. I like to think that they got the opportunity to one day.
We don't see a lot of romances set in the sixties. It's in an interesting period that doesn't quite feel historical but also is not contemporary. It is a period that people alive lived through but also one that is a completely different society from ours. It was interesting for me to read more about this period.
I recommend this one for fans of queer romance and particularly opposites attract or grumpy sunshine. I think readers who like other reading about earlier time periods will also enjoy this one.
Thanks to Avon for providing me with an eARC! All opinions are my own.
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