As a lover of Jenniferi Dugan's previous lGBTQ read (Some Girls Do), I was SO excited to read Playing for Keeps. However; I was quickly turned off with all the underage partying and couldn't feel a connection to either character or their storyline arcs. This wasn't a book that I was enjoying thus, I decided "not to finish it" at the 30% mark. Others may enjoy this one however; especially those who want a female led sports read that leans towards YA.

I enjoyed the heart that went into this book. There was great character development and great descriptions of personalities and feelings to help you connect. Beginning to middle I wasn’t sure where the storyline was going but ended up enjoying it. Was a good ending to wrap the story up. Easy YA read.

As always thank you to publishers and Netgalley for a free arc in exchange for an honest review!


I wish I could have enjoyed this more than I did. The first half definitely had me engaged but near the middle I just felt nothing and it didn't pick me up again until the end. Very well written story, just totally not for me.

Thank you to Penguin Teen and NetGalley for the ARC of the book. All opinions are my own.

I adore Jennifer and everything she writes. This was no exception! I had so much fun reading this one. She just has a way of pulling you in and you fall in love with the characters, setting and book. I highly recommend this!

While this comes off like something very lighthearted from the outside, it ends up dealing with a lot of heavier topics, mainly grief. This was very similar to the other Jennifer Dugan books I've read so it didn't catch me off guard and is something that added to my ultimate experience, but is worth mentioning for anyone who might be wary of a heavier read.

I really enjoyed this! As a baseball loving queer, I'm kind of biased towards enjoying something like this. It was fun and unique, not only with a woman in baseball, but also with Ivy's very earnest dream of officiating. When's the last time you saw a referee in fiction, let alone a queer one? I really loved that!

Yes, they could be very frustrating with their lack of communication and yes, they did go from feuding to making out with very little growth, but truthfully, that just feels like teenagers being teenagers to me. I've always found that Dugan can pull off some incredibly realistic teenagers, for better or worse, and this was no different.

Sapphic? Yes. Sports? Yes. YA? Yes. Jennifer Dugan? YES YES YES. I loved her previous titles, and this was no different! Jennifer Dugan is the queen of Sapphic YA love stories.

Emotional storylines, fun main characters, women breaking barriers. There was a lot to like in this book. The miscommunication trope isn't my favorite, so personally it stayed at four stars.

"Playing For Keeps" by Jennifer Dugan was a cute and engaging read that effectively highlights the pressures teens often face when trying to meet their parents' expectations. The story revolves around June and Ivy, two young women dealing with their own anxieties about the future when they first meet. Initially, they are in opposing positions, leading to less-than-stellar first impressions. However, as they get to know each other, they realize they have more in common than they thought, and they fall in love. The twist? Ivy is an official, and June is a player, meaning their relationship has to stay secret.

As the pressure mounts, their relationship becomes increasingly complicated, leading to a mess of emotions and situations towards the end. Despite the chaos, it was heartwarming to see how everything sorted out. It's a good read for the YA crowd, capturing the intense emotions and drama of teenage life.

While I was deeply invested in this book, I found June to be one of the most insufferable characters I've ever read. Though I understood her backstory and often felt bad for her, her constant whining and poor decisions made it difficult to empathize with her. On the flip side, Ivy was a delightful contrast. She was adorable, sweet, and I was always excited to see her appear in the story.

Jennifer Dugan excels at writing realistic characters, and June and Ivy are no exception. This realism can be a double-edged sword; while some readers might find the characters' actions relatable, others might be put off by their flaws. However, I think Dugan's ability to create such authentic characters is a significant strength, especially in the YA genre where relatability is key. High school seniors often act just as irrationally and emotionally as June and Ivy, but these actions are rarely critiqued in real life.

One thing Dugan consistently does well is crafting characters that evoke strong reactions. In "Playing for Keeps," I found myself disliking both June and Ivy's parents, who added depth to the storyline and drove the plot forward. Even though June reached an unlikable point for me, her eventual redemption made the journey worthwhile. By the end, I was rooting for the romance and hoping for a happy resolution.

If you enjoy books where characters make you want to pull your hair out but ultimately come around and fix their mistakes, "Playing For Keeps" is for you. Despite the frustrations, the story is sweet and satisfying, making it a great addition to any YA bookshelf.

A pretty solid read with some stakes attatched. I really liked the progression of the novel, how the two main characters got together semi-quickly. Then the rest of the book was about their struggles as a couple and trying to stay hidden.

I thought Jennifer Dugan does a really good job of making true to life teenagers in this book. There's a lot of angst about the losses in their life (understandable), but then there's also a lot of angst about trying to sort out what they want to do for college and how to go about it. I liked Ivy, but I wanted her to stop being so mean to her mother regarding college, haha.

I think that Ivy's story was more interesting than June's and I still think that June doesn't really pay much attention to Ivy even though they obviously get back together in the end. I think that they needed to work more on their communication skills and trying to sort out how this would work for them especially since June wrote them off as breaking up eventually on their first date. There was a touch too much miscommunication trope for me.

I liked the sports aspect of it and wish we had seen a bit more of Ivy really doing the referee/umpire aspect of the book and a little less of June's baseball burnout. However, I think it was a very true to life book about the struggles that teenagers go through and trying to live up to parental expectations.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free review copy! I have adored every one of Jennifer Dugan’s books for teens and this one was no different. An exceptional sapphic romcom for teens!

I really LOVED this emotionally charged, dual POV, enemies to lovers YA Sapphic romance from one of my fav authors, Jennifer Dugan. Ivy and June get off to a terrible start when pitching star Ivy walks into the umpire changing room. Under intense pressure, June is trying to live up to her dead mother's reputation, playing while hurt and in pain and finds comfort in Ivy who relates to losing a loved one from cancer, having lost her older brother.

With complicated family. pressures, both girls find some release giving into the sparks between them even though they have to hide their relationship from the league since its technically taboo for a player to date an official. With great supportive friends and important lessons about living for yourself not the memory of loved ones, this was great on audio and a new standout this year. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

There's just something about hs sports romances that I adore. I knew I would adore this the second I heard about it. Both Ivy and June have complicated yet similar pasts and deal with it in two very different but real ways. Having insight into how their past affects them helped to get a better understanding of where their heads were at and definitely led to a few moments of yelling at the book. Over all this is a wonderful hs romance that has great insight in how grief can effect people in different and valid ways.

I think this book had so much potential but I sadly had to DNF. I have read most of Jennifer Dugan's books but something about this one couldn't connect with me. I would still encourage you to pick it up if you like enemies to lovers.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!!

So I was very excited for this book because a sapphic sports romance sounds great. So we’ll start with what I liked. I appreciate that both Ivy and June are passionate and flawed characters. I also really enjoy Ivy’s love for officiating; it’s different and I think gives her a little bit of depth that is unique to her. I also appreciate that the word lesbian is used explicitly in the story.

However, the characters are very very similar, and I don’t quite see the reason for the dual POV. To me, it takes out any sort of tension around their attraction to each other because it was already mutual in the first couple chapters. And then just as quickly acted upon.

I liked June more than Ivy at first, and then the other way around later on, but much of the time they sounded exactly the same to me. I would have liked more character/home life focused introductions to them. To me, that came too late and after it was already explained to us, so it didn’t work for me.
I also didn’t really feel any chemistry between them up to their first kiss or afterwards. There was attraction and trauma bonding, but not genuine connection in my opinion. And that continued for me throughout the novel.

The plot also wasn’t interesting. It was very predictable, and I actually correctly guessed a great deal of it not even 20% into the book. I know it’s a romance novel, but I know predictable plots can be done well and this one did not hit. (No pun intended.)

I was so so close to DNFing this book at 25% and then at 50% that I skim read the 35% after that and felt like I missed absolutely nothing. And the ending didn’t make up for it for me.

I’m very disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this book. And I think it’ll be a while before I pick up another one of Dugan’s, if I ever do.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for my honest thoughts!

I'm a big fan of Jennifer Dugan and her characters! This sapphic sports romance was no exception. The two main characters find themselves with big dreams and hope to make their name known in male-dominated fields. June plays baseball and Ivy wants to be a ref. They fall for each other quite quickly and fall into a pretty messy, complicated relationship. This enemies to lovers/forbidden love felt a bit more like insta-love and I would have liked for the enemies part to be drawn out a bit more. Jennifer Dugan's MCs are often strong willed and stubborn and June and Ivy were no different. Both are so wrapped up in their own struggles, grief, and dreams while also trying to balance this forbidden relationship. The grief of both June and Ivy often overshadowed their love story and they felt stuck in their grief. Neither felt like they were able to process or move through their grief in this book.

Overall, June and Ivy felt like real teens you'd meet - raw and unfiltered, a bit selfish and lacking awareness of others. The miscommunication was frustrating but felt realistic for a YA novel. The ending felt a bit rushed and I would have loved to see the last few chapters develop a bit more. It felt like the third act resolved itself quicker than they fell for each other initially! There were some gaps in the story line and the story felt a bit short, but overall, I enjoyed this one! A solid 3 stars.

content warnings: dead family members, cancer, grief

This was an interesting read. Lots of grief and struggles to communicate with each other. I am not a sports person and they did a good job of not using too much sports specific lingo.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the ARC.

Personally, two things I really love are forbidden romances and sports stories. Imagine my delight in finding BOTH in Playing For Keeps. Unlike Ivy, I love baseball, so I was thrilled when she was assigned to umpire baseball games. There she meets June, a star pitcher dead set on MLB breaking barriers for female players, something she has in common with Ivy, who’s also determined to go pro in a male-dominated field. The two also have loss in common. Both Ivy’s brother and June’s mom died of cancer somewhat recently.

That’s where their similarities end, though, other than the fact that both are attracted to women.

I love that author Jennifer Dugan takes the forbidden romance angle one further. Ivy and June aren’t just on rival teams. The ethics consequences of an umpire dating a player whose games she’ll be officiating makes for extra spicy conflict and complications. That, and many other themes—loss, parental expectations; being blindly determined to the detriment of one’s health—are explored in realistic and entertain fashion here. The result is a sexy, messy, sometimes heart wrenching but completely entertaining story.

Jennifer Dugan hits it out of the park again! I loved getting to know these characters, especially in their small victories!

First, a huge thank you to NetGalley and Penguin YA Readers for this eARC!

As a lover of sports romances, this was right up my alley. I was super excited to read it, and it didn’t disappoint!

The romance was adorable, the conflicts were relevant, and the conclusion was perfect for the characters.

The only downside I could see was the rivals-to-lovers aspect could have been utilized more. It just felt a little too soon and too easy for the main characters to get together.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid book that I thoroughly enjoyed!