I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Sapphicathon: Enemies to Lovers

I really disliked this. Here’s some reasons:
• Jessie and Fran meet as members of the opposing teams when Fran gropes Jessie. Later Jessie says it was sexual assault but her coach and other teammates deny this or laugh at her. Yet we’re supposed to want them to fall in love? This is not the way to start off a relationship. I probably should’ve stopped reading then…
• Overuse of epithets: I swear Morven was referred to as ‘the policewoman’ more than her actual name.
• Too much telling and not showing: This was especially evident during the scene where Jessie’s parents tell her they’re divorcing and Jessie comes out to them.
• I found the scene where Jessie criticises Fran’s piercings and tattoos rather…unnecessary? Especially since she later completely changes her opinion on them.
• Jessie came off as very snobbish (and judgemental and classist) when she was surprised that Fran had been to private school.
• Then there’s this scene where Fran is late when Jessie is picking her up so Jessie walks in on her having sex, which was just uncomfortable and unnecessary.
• Too many side characters who were difficult to keep track of and could’ve easily been cut since they weren’t relevant to the plot at all.
• It was so difficult to like either of the MCs when they kept hurting each other, e. g. when Jessie knew she was invading Fran’s privacy but did it anyway.
• Jessie’s teammates frequently bully her yet we’re supposed to see it as friendly. For example, six of them get in Jessie’s car, force her to drive them somewhere when she just wants to go home on her own, then carry her into the bar against her will and force her to have alcohol when she doesn’t want to. This was one of the most difficult parts to read and what was especially horrible was that we’re supposed to see it as friendly teasing.
• Morven jokes to the team that their coach Tom is ‘further in the closet than our Jessie’. This is never referenced again (when it would’ve been interesting if he was actually gay/bi since he’s like a father figure to Jessie) and this outing of both of them is treated as a joke.
• When Jessie’s parents tell her they’re divorcing, they use the cliché ‘We still love each other, we’re just not ‘in love’ anymore’ which comes up in almost every single divorce scene I’ve ever read, yet have any divorcing couple ever said that in real life?
• Jessie flirts with a minor character who is described as ‘exotic’, ‘mocha-shaded’ and ‘maybe part Caribbean’. Later she and Fran have a one night stand and Fran lies to this character that Jessie is straight (although she knows/suspects otherwise) in order to keep this minor character to herself. This token woman of colour is nothing more than a plot device to heighten the tension between Jessie and Fran.
• Morven mocks Jessie for not knowing her sexuality yet and not being out.
• At Morven’s bachelorette party, her teammates forcibly hold her down and take all her clothes off, which we’re again supposed to see as a friendly joke.
• Towards the end there’s this weird rant about anti-capitalism and while I’d normally be all for that, it comes completely out of the blue and then is never referenced again.
• It's supposed to be a sports romance but during the middle section there's barely any sports.

Representation: Jessie is a WLW (sexuality unspecified). Fran is a lesbian and a recovering addict. Among the minor characters (mostly the other teammates) Sophie is a Black WLW and dates another minor teammate character, Morven is a WLW and has her wedding at the end of the book and the coach Tom is possibly gay/bi (see above).
Ownvoices/author info: Wendy Temple is a lesbian.

Content warnings: sexual assault as outlined above, smoking, vomiting, f slur in reference to cigarettes, mention of a past car accident and resulting injuries, masturbation, alcohol, grandparent having a stroke, parents’ divorce, racism as outlined above, drugs, sex scenes.

2 stars

Okay, let me just start by saying that I was so excited about this book. I’d been hearing about it for so long, eagerly waiting for it to be released as an arc for review for months, and I feel like I put it on a pedestal that it couldn’t live up to.
It really, really wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought it was gonna be a bangin’ lighthearted book about football with kickass lesbian protagonists… but it just wasn’t. It ended up being a one-woman drama about sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, and rock n’ roll. Which was just not what I signed up for. It was far too heavy on the addiction and bad coping mechanisms for me, and waaaaaay to light on the good gay content.

Sure, there was football and some great lesbian rep - I mean, Jessie and Fran aren’t just female football players, oh no, they’re PROFESSIONAL REPRESENT-YOUR-COUNTRY female football players who are open about their love for women and unashamed of their sexuality. Now how awesome is that. Honestly, how many books can you say you’ve read with professional female football players who are open lesbians? Lets think about that…. Probably none. And that’s what I was so excited about. So you go into this thinking our getting a fresh, original new story about sport (which is exactly what the cover and description make you think) and then BAM you’ve got a gritty, triggering narrative that you just weren’t prepared for.

So Jessie Grainger is former Scottish national team soccer player. She’s an amazing athlete who deserves to be considered the best in her sport. European clubs with far better teams have trying to recruit her for years but she chooses to stay with LTFC because she runs a business from her Scottish hometown and is loathe to leave her parents. She’s a beautifully written character with so many different dimensions who owns her sexuality and exudes confidence and poise.

Fran, on the other hand, is a mess. And not just her personal life, I mean her character in general. She’s incredibly hard to like or sympathize with and that doesn’t change at all throughout the whole novel. So she basically joins LTFC for the paycheck and is somehow one of the best players they’ve ever seen despite coping with a drug and alcohol addiction. Bollocks. The amount of fitness, skill, and motivation it takes to play ANY sport on a professional level is astronomical and there’s absolutely no way she could keep up with a professional team while smoking at least a pack of cigarettes a day, staying up half the night to shag complete strangers, recovering from years of hard drug (think heroin) use, and the lack of training from her latest two year jail stint and you can see how she just does not make sense as a footballer.

As for the romance, well I’m genuinely struggling to find words for how unhealthy Jessie and Fran would be together. I mean first off there was hardly any damn dialogue between the two main characters, which is ridiculous. Fran mostly communicates in grunts and sour looks, which are terrible considering a relationship can’t possibly be built on attraction alone, there has to be some kind of communication. So much was said by the author in sub-plots, but nothing was shown to the reader in terms of active communication. And I just do not see what Jessie saw in her. Fran was moody, furtive, and basically gave Jessie the cold shoulder at every available opportunity which most definitely does not scream “pursue me please I would be great in a committed relationship”. The whole thing just smacks of red flags.

Majority of this book really doesn’t make sense and because of that I found it really difficult to read. At one point I put the book down and didn’t pick it up for another month because I was utterly bored with the story. There was so much background noise that I disliked everything about Defensive Mindset except for Jessie Grainger - and because of that I had to give it a two star rating. It could have been great, but it just wasn’t.

Thank you to Netgalley and Book Enthusiast Promotions for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I did not review this book because I could not get interested in the story line.

I wish I could say I enjoyed this… I was actually very excited to read this, but, unfortunately, it was a complete miss for me.

Star footballer and successful businesswoman Jessie Grainger has her life set, and doesn’t need anything getting in the way. That includes rebellious rival player Fran Doherty, a burnt-out barmaid with a past as messed up as her attitude. So when the clashing pair find themselves on the same Edinburgh women football team, how will they survive each other, let alone play to win?

When I read the book synopsis, I was over the moon. Lesbians? In Scotland? Playing football? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!! I adore football (I am referring to european football) and as a queer girl myself, I thought I had found a book very close to my personal taste and interests. I have to admit that every scene set in the football field or practice was very enjoyable, and actually became the most interesting part of the book for me. Unfortunately, these scenes only made up about 15-20% of the book.

As for the rest of the book? A complete mess, for me. I couldn’t connect to any of the characters. The secondary characters were a bit underdeveloped (probably to allow Jessie and Fran to grow and shine more), but here’s the thing: both Jessie and Fran were just very dull. I found nothing interesting about them. They both fell into literature stereotypes and tropes, and, consequently, their relationship also felt trope-y and unoriginal as hell. Jessie was the golden, extremely organized and put-together girl. Fran, on the other hand, was the female version of the mysterious bad boy trope. I couldn’t see any chemistry between the characters or any reason for them to be together, to be honest.

I wish football had played a bigger part in this story. I truly found the football scenes and the team dynamics to be the author’s strongest asset and I wish she had focused more on it. I picked up the book specifically for its sapphic romance, but it ended up becoming my least favourite part of the book.



**An ARC was provided via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review**

Jessie is a football player, she’s extremely friendly, almost annoyingly so. The best way to describe her would be prim and proper. Fran is her opposite. She’s got tattoos and piercings everywhere. She’s an addict and an alcoholic. Fran’s also very closed off and barely speaks.
When the two first meet on the field, on the last game of the season, they don’t exactly get along. Fran gets handsy while defending and Jessie gets pissed and slaps her.
Jessie takes an immediate dislike to her but then tries to sort it out when Fran gets signed by her club. Shit then gets complicated.

The book started out ok, a bit conventional, maybe. It felt like another love story I’ve read times and times before but it was still entertaining. I was mostly enjoying it. But as things escalated, the connection between the two main characters didn’t feel genuine anymore. For example, Jessie first mentions she’s in love with Fran to a third party but the two of them haven’t even had a real conversation yet… How can you be in love with someone you barely know?
At some point in the book, some of the dialogues seemed weird to me, they didn’t seem like what anyone would actually say. Idk... It’s just that for a big part of the book, I found myself rolling my eyes a lot and I had a hard time getting back into the story afterwards.
It didn’t help that I didn’t really connect with the two main characters. They were fine I guess but, sadly, I didn’t fall for either of them….
Honestly, this would have usually been a lower rating than 3 stars but I rounded up because it’s set in Edinburgh and Edinburgh is the best city in the world and everything set there deserves a chance.

By the cover and the jacket blurb, I had been expecting a slightly more sports-focused story. Other than a few very brief game scenes and practice sessions spoken of rather than actually seen, there is very little actual soccer in this book. Instead, the perspective bounces back and forth between Jessie, the "good girl", and Fran the recovering addict and follows their relationship from antagonistic adversaries to team mates. Granted things aren't as focused as that and there are a plethora of side characters and scenes that don't help move the plot along. However again I find myself reading a lesbian romance book that does not manage to show two people falling for each other and once again just forces it by telling the reader how they feel. Not to mention that there are very few, if any, redeeming qualities in Fran that would make anyone want to root for her much less pursue her. She takes being monosyllabic to a whole new level, insists upon silence and sleeps when Jessie drives her around to their training and games, and is constantly smoking. I cannot fathom why Jessie is drawn to her, unless she just enjoys being treated like garbage. There's even this troubling line of hers around half way through the book that was essentially saying that the worse Fran treated her, the more Jessie wanted her. Nice. I wish one of these other team mates would have staged an intervention at some point because both of these characters needed help, and not in the arms of each other.

Well, before I started this review, I have taken a look to those already made. I agree that this is not just a romance/sport book, the game is very secondary way treated. Even the football sorroundings as training time, pre game and post game situations. It is just a little part of the complex relationship between Jessie and Fran. I agree in the poor behaviour of the teammates, lacking credibility in semiprofessional athletes. I too agree in the excesive odd personality of Fran and the difficulty in understand the atraction that Jessie feels towards her. But those seemingly negative points have not prevent that I have greatly enjoyed this book. Really a page turner for me. Completely touching in some parts. I have missed a little more development of the story, so much abruptly finished for my liking. All in all a good read

I absolutely loved this book! 10/10 from me! I love this kind of story honestly. I love how there's a chase and then right when you think it's all good the drama continues and it goes like that for a while until right when it seems that the book won't ever have the ending you want it all falls into a more than satisfactory finish. I actually read this book in under 24 hours because I loved the story and the characters so much. I love how it changes in point of view but the entire time it's written in third person so it's not that noticeable. I love how this book isn't just focused on soccer or "football" and it's not just focused on Fran and Jessie's relationship and it's not only focused on Fran's story. I love how it's a mush of them all but there's an equal balance and it's all mixed together. I love how the story was told and enjoyed the pace it went at. I loved the depth of these characters as well. Thank you Wendy Temple for writing this, I'm sure I'll read this book again in a couple years just to try and relive the feelings it gave me. So thank you!

At first I was excited about this book because I like soccer and the prospect of sports and romance seemed to just work but not in this book.
I liked the character of Jessie but I just couldn't handle Fran. There were just many points in the book about Fran that I just can't see happening - like she is a (ex) heroin addict, was in jail and so on and I just can't imagine that someone like that would have a shoot at the Women's Champions League.
The other point is she smokes like all the time throughout the book and soccer requires a lot of running - how is that fit with constantly smoking and drinking and it doesn't seem like she is that into soccer either - she says on many account she just does it for the paycheck... how can she make it to this league?
The romance part is also a bit unbelievable for me - Fran doesn't talk at all, it doesn't seem because she is shy or something - she doesn't talk a lot and just shows attitude towards everybody. I just can't see how Jessie would fall for her.
The whole book has a lot of things in it that seem kind of unbelievable and unreasonable to me.