Home Field Advantage was an abso-fucking-lutely take on the classic cheerleader-quarterback romance with a sapphic twist. From the very first page, I was enthralled. It was such a fun, lighthearted, cute story that had me smiling like an idiot.

When Jack Walsh “moves” (cough recruited cough) to Atherton and becomes the quarterback for the football team, she certainly didn’t expect the entire football team, cheer squad, and the student body to hate her. The only one to talk to Jack like a human being is Amber McCloud, aspiring cheer captain. Amber quickly falls for Jack but with an anti-queer town, a fake boyfriend, and securing cheer captain for next year against her, Amber faces the difficulties of her desires conflicting. Home Field Advantage follows Jack and Amber as they navigate a homophobic and misogynistic high school that is constantly wanting to shove both of them farther into the closet than they can imagine.

My only complaint with this book is the writing style. It’s really not that bad but the language and word choice can be really modern at times. The kind of modern that can easily become annoying, cringey, and will definitely date the book (and not in the best way). It’s not a constant issue in the book, and only really shows up a handful of times, but it’s consistent throughout the story.

While this story does not delve much on serious issues and is more of a cute rom-com, there is one content warning that readers should definitely be aware of. That being miscarriage/abortion. It was not really explained whether Cara missing Kelsey’s party was due to her having a miscarriage or an unsafe abortion. I’m leaning towards miscarriage because she did mention that she wanted to raise the baby and that her very religious parents wouldn’t take her (since she doesn’t have her own vehicle) to get an abortion.

We are living in the golden age of sapphic YA romances and this one sets the gold standard. (I'm trying to think of apt sports metaphors but I simply do not understand football.) A romance between a quarterback and a cheerleader but make it sapphic. It gives me all of the warm and fuzzy feelings and I am just sitting here crying thinking about the fact that we live in a world with such beautiful and unabashed sapphic YA stories.

Thanks to Wednesday and NetGalley for this ARC.

Thank you to Wednesday Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Overall really enjoyed this one! I really enjoyed Cool For the Summer, so of course I was excited for this one! While I'm not a big football fan, I always love seeing female characters getting the chance to play. A sapphic QB and cheerleader story was a really awesome premise, so I couldn't wait to dive in.

While I really enjoyed Jack as a character, though, I didn't much care for Amber. Amber was selfish throughout the book, and although I understand that her main motivation is not wanted to be outed, it was also to be cheer Captain and it's just kind of gross. Brought it down to 4⭐ for me.

Still, overall a solid read, but just not a fan of Amber, even if she gets a bit better in the end.

Maybe because I was more obsessed with learning how to put top spin on my serve than perfect a spiral throw in high school, the whole jock-cheerleader dynamic has never interested me much in real life or in stories.

Until Dahlia Adler got to start the game.

In the Dahliaverse, the quarterback is a prodigy named Jack, new in town with dreams of school victories leading to a college scholarship. Complicating this is the fact that Jack is short for Jaclyn, and also that since the town’s QB recently died, none of the team is keen on his legacy being shown up by a girl of all people. Amber, the cheerleader in this equation, has her heart set on a college scholarship, too, and to her, that means staying in the good graces of the cheer squad to be named captain. It also means definitely not letting her closeted queer heart fall for Jack.

This update makes for a fresh innovative read, but it’s the nuanced complexity Adler gives these characters that wins a reader’s heart. Their hopes and fears are treated with such respect that by the inevitable pivotal homecoming game, you’re genuinely rooting for these two girls to somehow cartwheel into the sunset together. Home Field Advantage is an all-Pro special team of a book– part coming out, part Super Bowl, all love story — that seems impossible, but Adler beautifully launches this sapphic Hail Mary right into the Happily Ever After end zone. Touchdown! Frak, I mean, all the stars!

I really enjoyed Home Field Advantage. It's a great addition to any library's queer romance section in the Teen Room. The dual perspectives helped me get to know the characters and their problems. Totally love the sports romance angle too!

I loved this queer take on a classic trope. The characters are great and the writing is a lot of fun. It can be a bit tough at times with how homophobic and misogynistic some of the characters are, but they get their happy ending and it's a good read overall!

This is a delight, which I knew it would be after loving Dahlia Adler’s Cool for the Summer last year.

Amber has dreams of becoming cheer captain and being able to get a scholarship so she can go to college away from Atherton and be able to be out and openly date girls. But while she’s still in high school, she and her best friend Miguel are each other’s beard, especially after Miguel had been blackmailed, to make sure if the blackmailer tried to out him he could have Amber to alleviate suspicion. When Robbie, the quarterback at Atherton, dies suddenly Jack is brought on (but not recruited) because she has the skills that could finally get Atherton a winning season. Unfortunately everyone on the football team and the cheerleader squad is more concerned with the fact she’s a girl than the fact she has skills, which makes Jack’s experiences less than stellar.

I really enjoyed this book and the romance between Amber and Jack was overall really cute. I also adored Amber and Miguel’s friendship and the solidarity they’ve built to survive their closeted experience. I did find some of Amber’s selfishness and lying frustrating at the end but that could be a product of me being an adult reading the book because it definitely aligned with her character and motivations. If you want an overall fluffy contemporary quarterback-cheerleader romance this will absolutely satisfy!

Pub date: 6/7/22
Genre: YA romance
In one sentence: Amber wants to be cheer captain - but what happens when your team won't cheer for the new female quarterback?

I picked up this book looking for a YA romance to help me forget about my problems, and it lived up to my expectations. I loved watching Amber and Jack fight for what they believed in, especially Jack standing up to her teammates. The queer representation in this book was great and diverse, with some good conversations between characters. If you're looking for a quick read full of encouragement, this is a good one to pick up!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press/Wednesday Books for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved this book! The plot was fast passed, cute, clever and refreshing. The characters were a bit cliché, however they recognized this and admitted it about themselves which was a nice touch! There was a really great twist that I caught me off guard (not an easy feat!) and I loved that it surprised me! I wish that the characters were a bit more developed but otherwise I thought this was a fun, quick, YA read that represents LQBTQ teens in small towns really well and which I will definitely read again!

Home Field Advantage was another fantastic book from Dahlia Adler. Both Jack and Amber gripped me immediately, and I could not let the story go until I had come to the end. The struggle to come out and be out and be in a situation like Jack finds herself in is unfortunately as real today as it ever was, and it's affirming and important to see characters working through those issues. The side characters had depth and the swampy Florida heat lept off the page. I can never wait for the next Adler book, and this was no exception.

I’m not sure how to rate this one really. I enjoyed the story, but the way this author described the sexuality of Amber made me uncomfortable and it felt a bit transphobic to me. I’m not trans, so I can’t really speak on it with any authority, but it did made me a little uncomfortable

I've recently ventured into reading YA, especially YA Romance and I loved the premise of this book. As someone whose family business is centered around Football, I had to suspend disbelief. Not the part about a female playing football, but game day thoughts and attention and focus. Primarily, the quarterback checking out the cheerleader when her head is surely in the game. Certainly, this is to build drama and tension, which was very well done, but I had to shake that observation off many times.
While this was a very well-crafted Romance, I felt that there was little development of chemistry other than the physical attraction and being the only "out" couple in the high school. And they, primarily Amber, weren't out to the rest of the school. It was as if their radar connected them. I wanted to see more of a connection. I'm trying to think what else they had in common, and I couldn't place my finger on it. Amber came from a single-parent home with an absentee father and Jack came from a loving two-parent home with siblings, who all made sacrifices for her athletic and academic career. And while opposites attract, I wasn't sure what other attributes each of the young women had to keep them as a couple.
I will say that the stakes and drama were high. I really connected with that storyline. Author Adler can write a lot of tension, not just sexual, but between groups of people. It was highly dramatic with the secondary and tertiary storylines. I couldn't stop turning the page. I read this book within two days since receiving it for an honest review. And my rating is higher because of the perfect combination of joy, pain, fear, anxiety, desire to succeed, and connection between the two young ladies.
I felt the two characters were very realistic in how they comported themselves within such an unforgiving group of teenagers. As a cis-hetero middle-aged mother of teens, I wouldn't have been able to navigate such exclusionary waters, or halls, of Atherton High. And the mascot being the Alligators was highly fitting for the cheerleading and football squad who were ready to take down their own member and death roll them until they could no longer breathe.
I want to extend my sincere appreciation to the Publisher, the author, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read my very first queer romance. It was a delight to read and I know this won't be my last foray into the worlds that Author Adler creates.

A younger YA audience might enjoy this one more than me. Just wasn’t my style of contemporary writing that I like. I did like some of the ideas within, it just wasn’t for me.

okay, where do i begin with this… mostly, i just feel so conflicted about the route at which this all went down. i guess, first, i personally didn’t really feel the connection between amber and jack beyond the surface level of “oh, i find this person hot and they’re the only other queer person around, so lets date”. they definitely grew on my more as the story progressed, especially with the final couple of chapters after there was *the grand gesture*. that was my key turning point with them, from beyond feeling kind of neutral, into something slightly more positive. but for the majority, i just didn’t feel a connection between them, especially as the driving couple.

i also, just didn’t love how amber acted throughout the whole story. i won’t get into the specifics, but i was just genuinely disappointed with how amber acted towards both miguel and jack, when it came to potentially coming out to their school. and like i mentioned, it was kind of redeemed by her actions during *the grand gesture*. but personally, it just felt too easily forgiven and forgotten all for the sake of having them be out and proud in the last chapter (or so). however, i do appreciate that there was some (unfortunate) realism that they weren’t widely accepted from their peers by the end, but were still supported by those who mattered to them.

while i didn’t connect with everything that occurred between the characters, i can say that i appreciate the wide variety of different queer identities. i especially appreciate having a non-binary character that uses they/them pronouns. and i appreciate that, while it wasn’t an in-depth conversation, amber spoke about how she was still questioning her sexuality. and how she was currently using the label of polysexual. it’s possibly the first time i’ve seen this label explicitly used by a character in a book, and i hope that her confusions and concerns might be able to help a young queer reader connect with her and learn about their possible identity.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Dahlia Adler for an ARC in exchange for a review!

Home Field Advantage is such a cute story and you can't help but root for all of the characters in the book! Jack Walsh has just moved to become the quarterback for Atherton to fill the spot left by the previous quarterback's tragic death. Amber McCloud wants to become cheer captain and that's going to plan until she meets and begins to fall in love with Jack, who everyone else dislikes. As the two get closer, they have to figure out who they are and what really means the most to them.

The classic quarterback and cheerleader relationship with a queer spin is so cute and Adler gives us anything one could hope for in a YA romance. The dual point of views of Jack and Amber tell the story and push the plot along until the very last page. I loved getting to read this and it is definitely one of my favorite YA queer novels.

Good God I LOVED this! This was such an incredible story about love, and self, and sexuality and relationships. I’ve been out of high school for a while, but it felt like a fairly good representation of the angst and animosity dealt with in high school, although it does make me wonder if it’s still, in 2022, as awful to be queer in high school as the book depicts (if it is, that really sucks-do better America). The writing was smart and incredibly witty and fairly steamy that I honestly forgot that these characters were high schoolers at times. I binged this book because I couldn’t bear to put it down-it was incredibly compelling and I needed to know what would happen next. If I’m honest I’m probably going to read this again soon.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I’m happy to report that Home Field Advantage is just as good—if not better—than Cool For The Summer, which I read last year. Adler is back with some good character building (just because her protagonists are teens doesn’t mean they don’t need depth or have real problems), interesting family dynamics and a high school drama that isn’t too over the top or cheesy. The stakes aren’t really that high, but the feels are everywhere, which makes this the perfect read for the summer.

4 STARS

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

WOWWOWOWW THIS BOOK IS AMAZING. I am obsessed!!! I love love love sport romances but the gender flip on it is soooooo good. Amber has wanted to cheer captain for as long as she can remember but she's finding it hard to be cheerful when the quarterback of their high school team was killed in an accident. Now he's going to be replaced by someone new which is hard but then the school realizes that Jack is actually Jaclyn. That's right, the new quarterback is a girl. A very attractive girl! The school doesn't react to this news well. The football players have issues with being led by a girl and the cheerleaders want to take Jack down. However as Jack and Amber grow closer, Amber has to choose who she wants more. I love love it. I loved every part of it. If I could give it a hug I would!

Overall a sweet, fast paced story, that did a good job of keeping your attention throughout the story!

I really liked Amber (she was really sweet and funny), and while I felt for Jack, and wanted everyone to treat her better, I didn't particularly like her. They had some cute moments, but I felt like their romance was kind of superficial, and I didn't find myself very invested in their romance.

It was a slightly more serious read than what I expected in that it felt that this was more of a contemporary romance than a romcom.

I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. As a former marching band kid, I expected the cheerleader/quarterback romance trope to inspire a lot of eye rolls from me. But this was well done and not at all cliche. I appreciated the diverse characters, and a queer parent. I also think Dahlia did a good job researching Florida or has probably lived in Florida. Although some of the plot felt repetitive, I think that is the nature of writing for a YA audience. In all, I was invested in this story and these characters, and flew through this book pretty quickly.

My only critique is that I wish Dahlia Adler would stop portraying thin-centered beauty standards in her books. It is clear that all of her characters are hot because they are skinny. Do better.