It is almost offensive how good of a writer Marisa Crane is. This was so goddamn funny and heart-rending all at once. It’s excruciatingly accurate to how it feels to be closeted, to be a perfectionist, to be in the clutches of first love, to be in the throes of grief. I couldn’t put it down. It will almost certainly be my favorite book I read this year.

Thank you infinitely to Mac Crane and The Dial Press for the e-ARC.

This is a coming of age story that has the backdrop of basketball. I think we can all think back to what is was like when we were teenagers and figuring out who we were. I could feel the pain and the longing and at times it broke my heart. The writing was a bit slow for me, but overall an emotional read. Thank k you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

I found this an interesting coming of age but the pacing went back and forth for me. At times I was very interested and at times I lost interest. The basketball was interesting, which I never thought I'd say. The relationship is a slow burn but was very genuine of adolescence

This is a very moving and emotional book about coming of age, love, and loss. It’s about Mack, a superstar basketball player whose life is turned upside down when her father dies. Then enters Liv, a new classmate at school. This was such a beautiful story about first love, discovering oneself and then the added pressure of being a star player and all the expectations of that. Mack and Liv’s relationship is sweet, raw and real, and the author brilliantly explores all that comes with first love.

The location of small-town Pennsylvania in the early noughts added some nostalgia. Remember mixtapes? Crane writes beautiful prose and characters. I loved how the characters’ struggles were portrayed and how Mack was searching for her true identity all the while grieving her father’s death. I am not a fan of basketball, but the parts with the games were amazing. I could tell how physical the basketball is and how passionate Mack is about it.

This is a very moving book with some important issues. It’s a testament to love, romantic and otherwise. It is also a reminder that even when there is loss, there is always the promise of tomorrow and healing on the horizon.

I love a good coming of age story, especially one with a sports theme, so I was excited to try this one. I enjoyed the competitive basketball aspect, the on and off court relationships, and learning more about the behind the scenes of college basketball. For non-sports fans, the detailed technical descriptions of the basketball scenes may not resonate as much. The other central theme, aside from basketball, is the exploration of sexual identity, particularly coming out as gay in a small town. I could really feel the angst and the raw emotions of these teenagers as they experimented both sexually and with substances. There were several disturbing sexual situations and having a teen of my own made these scenes even more cringey. Overall, the author did a great job fleshing out the characters and making you feel all their emotions. Unfortunately this one didn’t work as well for me. The middle started to drag, there was a lot of repetitive scenes of substance abuse that didn’t add much to the story, some uncomfortable sexual encounters, and the ending left me a bit confused. Ultimately I don’t think I was the right reader for this one but do think it will hit the mark for those who enjoy queer coming of age sports stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Review posted to StoryGraph and Goodreads on 5/8/25. Review will be posted to Amazon on release date.

As Mack gets ready to start her senior year of high school her life is drastically turned upside down by the sudden loss of someone important in her life. She takes solace in basketball and a new girl on the team Liv. Mack must confront what she wants with her life and where she wants to go to college all while navigating her sexuality and who she is away from the court.
God this was so brilliantly written. The prose was lyrical and moved with such grace it was like watching your favorite basketball player dominate in the best game of their life. I found myself so attached to these characters and wanting to hug them and give them big sister advice. If you love basketball and coming of age stories, this book is for you

Thank you to Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for providing me with an early copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

The publisher was kind enough to reach out and send me a copy of this book, which I am very appreciative of. I was really excited by the premise of this book as I love sapphic books, and especially sports sapphic books. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped to. I don't really have any major complaints -- it just sort of fell flat for me. I don't mind books with little plot guidance but this book just felt really light on things happening (if that makes any sense). I think the writing just wasn't for me and unfortunately that meant I didn't love it.

That said, I read the book and finished it which means I liked it well enough. I would still recommend to anyone else who likes women's basketball and maybe it'll click better for you than it did me.

4.25⭐️

(TW: sexual assault, homophobia)

A gorgeous, coming-of-age lesbian story about two high school basketball teammates who fall into unrequited love. Each of our characters struggles with gender, sexual orientation, homophobia, trauma, and having no reliable parents in their lives to help them try and understand the world. This book takes place in bumblefuck Pennsylvania, which is where I’m from, so that made the scenery of this story super vivid for me.

If you struggled with your identity and queerness as a child, this book will feel like a gut punch. Marisa’s writing style is poetic but modern, with all of the early 2000s angst, and they really paint the picture of feeling claustrophobic and lost in your teen years and trying to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life. The impact in the dichotomy between Mack’s intimacy scenes with boys versus girls feels so real painful to read at times.

I will say, I do not care about basketball, so I did find myself bored during the many sports scenes, but the palpable yearning and tension between our two main characters kept me engaged, and made their basketball playing scenes together readable for non-sport fans.

Sapphics who never got over the girl who made them realize they’re gay- this book is for you!

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC!

This was a tough read for me and am not sure why. I loved the idea of the story....the uncertainly of being in love at a young age, made doubly difficult by being in love with someone of the same sex. (Been there so I know that feeling, that angst). The author absolutely loves basketball and you can tell that from her writing. She is very detailed in that respect. I can also acknowledge that there is a correlation between basketball and what the characters were going through in their own personal lives. I just could not connect to either Mack or Liv. Perhaps it is because of my own age and the inability to put myself back to that era.

A Sharp Endless Need is insanely overwritten. Marisa Crane makes her peers—Chloe Michelle Howarth, Julia Armfield, Bronwyn Fischer—look positively restrained (which is saying something!). This is an observation, not a critique. Hot-house-flower prose has flourished in Lesbian literature forever. See: turn-of-the-century French decadents like Jane de la Vaudère or Renée Vivien, the women’s-fiction-meets-expressionism of Weimar Germany’s Maximiliane Ackers or Anna Elisabet Weirauch, the spiritually inflected self-indulgence of Radclyffe Hall.

Like her queer forebearers, Marisa Crane seeks glory in the sparks that fly when love is pushed into the closet and public performance becomes the soul’s only outlet (the closet being, among other things, a veritable vortex of overheated emotion without vent). In other words, this novel brings some seriously camp energy to High School basketball. The intensity of the most violent scenes—and, for that matter, of the most lovely—is almost overwhelming, even as key emotions, key motivations remain below the surface for the entire book, invisible but to the careful reader.

Mack only sees the hurt done to her. She hardly registers the hurt she does.

Reading the first half of A Sharp Endless Need, I couldn’t help thinking that if you gave me a few hours and felt-tip pen, I could make this novel a hell of a lot better just by slicing off a couple metaphors per page. Reading the second half, I mostly changed my mind. It helped, I’m sure, that I know first-hand the intimacy and intensity even pick-up basketball can have—the charged contact between defender and defended, the unmatchable euphoria of a well-executed play.

This was such an intense, coming-of-age story that perfectly combined that angst of first love and sports obsession! Mack and Liv are standout stars on their high school basketball team. They’re juggling school, their social lives, and college recruiting while also trying to win their school a league championship in basketball. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that they also really like each other - and in the midst of all the college and sports pressure, they also must deal with the confusion, uncertainty, and butterflies in the stomach that come with a first love.

First, I LOVE ALL THE BASKETBALL in this book. I love sports and am currently in the midst of this roller coaster ride of recruiting with my daughter. It’s not for the faint of heart and Crane truly nails the process. In addition, I just love sports and thought the moments she wrote about an intense game landed really well…however, I could see this being a turn off for less sports-minded people. There’s no need to get bogged down in the terminology if it’s not your thing - it doesn’t take anything away if you skim through the games and practice scenes.

Second, Crane handled the relationship between Mack and Liv quite well. The book is set in the early 2000s and the town where they live seemed to be still fairly close-minded. So not only are these two girls struggling with the intensity and confusion of their first-love feelings, they’re also trying to navigate through their community’s attitudes toward queer romance. The relationship and feelings are intense and I got completely swept away while rooting for Mack and Liv the entire time.

The one thing that started to annoy me was the amount of drug and alcohol use. I’m not trying to be naive, but it seemed overboard at times, especially for two such elite athletes. As previously mentioned, I am thick in this world, and the girls are diligent about their training, their sleep, and their nutrition. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it certainly hasn’t been the case around the girls I know.

Regardless, if you were a fan of the movie, Love and Basketball, this would be a great recommendation for you. It was such a unique premise for a love story and one that’s especially fun for fans of women’s basketball!

A Sharp Endless Need by Marissa Crane is a raw coming of age story set in the early 2000’s that features grief, young love and identity. Mack is a high school basketball sensation struggling with her identity in a small town in Pennsylvania where homophobia is rampant. “I think I just want to look like a not-girl.” She develops a strong attraction to her new teammate Liv, which becomes her “sharp endless need”.

I enjoy basketball and sports romances in general, but I found this novel to be slowly paced. There is a lot of time spent detailing events on the courts. However I thought the author adequately describes the pressures on young, elite athletes. Self harm, self soothing with drugs and alcohol as well as inconsequential sexual experiences are prevalent. The ending is left vague with a few loose ends. Although this novel may not have been for me, I think that readers who enjoy queer coming of age sports romances will enjoy this. 3/5⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for a gifted advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own. Anticipated release date: 5/13/25

A coming-of-age sapphic book about basketball. This book captivated me at the prologue of how they described basketball and of the main character Mackenzie's aspiration. Mackenzie is a closeted lesbian who falls in love with Liz, who becomes her best friend. She is also a player on the basketball team. I would say this book is a slow burn when it comes to their relationship. Makenzie's yearning for her is a central plot point of this book. There are many scenes of it, and the way it's written touches those feelings. I also liked how they bonded through their complex relationship with their fathers. Which I feel reastic to some people on how they find their significant other is through those hard times and having someone who understands them. I would recommend this book to sapphic lovers because it's well-written in those sapphic aspects.

The one thing I felt the book could have done better is to figure out certain plot points being figured out of the other characters. They spend time with other characters in the book, and they are interesting, but I wish there were more near the end of what happens to those characters. Overall, though, I did enjoy the book.

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House, for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

The amount of longing in this work.. I found the character dynamics very touching and I felt absorbed by the characters and found them relatable. I'll be recommending this to others. Thank you for the advance reading copy!

Not going to lie I care zero percent about sports and know nothing about basketball but i imagine people who do would get even more out of this than i did,

Lesbian intimacy and desire in small town in nowhere america and doing it well is just chefs kiss! We love when this subject is respected with the heaviness and seriousness it should be.

The dialogue was very teen girl angst and in this context it works very well. our main character's struggles with sexuality in such homophobic and repressive/regressive environment was so touching and realistic I’m a fan.

while i don't know anything about basketball, i do know what it's like to feel the pressures of being a teenager and this story encapsulates that so well. i'm a sucker for coming of age stories and the author did a fantastic job at showcasing one. but i did get a bit disconnected from the characters and their story about halfway through, especially closer to the end. fortunately, that didn't make me uninterested in the book but i do wish things were laid out a bit better towards the end.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5

I was a big fan of Crane's previous book so I was very excited to delve into this one. While it shares some themes with I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, A Sharp Endless Need is a work that reminds you that you don't always need to go full dystopia to have your heart broken by the world. It is poignant, real, and often very very sad. The main characters are well realized and Crane does a masterful job of capturing a really strong sense of time and place. I am not a sports fan and so was curious how I'd feel about a story that featured basketball so heavily but Crane leverages the character's love of the game well and the descriptions of all of the game play surprised me with how interesting they often were. My biggest complaint is that I found myself wishing there had been more time for the events and characters to develop. If you were a queer woman coming of age in the 00's you might want to give your therapist a heads up that you'd picking this up.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me an advanced copy to read in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. Crane writes beautifully and created such messy, unlikable, yet realistic characters. I am not sure I “enjoyed” this book as I think it’s too bleak to enjoy in the traditional sense, but I do think it is an important read and would recommend it to the right reader.

This is a love letter to basketball and queer basketball players. If you love basketball and the poetry of the game, this book is for you.

If you love open-ended books where readers are meant to form their own conclusions and dream up possibilities for the characters, this book is for you.

If you’re drawn to stories of queer people exploring who they are in a world that is threatening to them for doing so, this book will leave you with a lot of thoughts.

If you’re looking for a romance book, I wouldn’t recommend this one because it’s open-ended and doesn’t fulfill the happy ending requirement of the romance genre.

If you love stories of yearning, especially closeted queer stories of yearning, good god this book is for you.

If you’re put off by substance abuse, you will struggle with this book.

3.5 stars for me. I had a hard time because my brain would wander, without my permission, any time we were going on about basketball. Which is a lot, I didn’t realize basketball would be like its own character it was such a presence. But I really loved the writing. I felt very much like I was being floated through a movie. The ending left me with too many questions and too many loose ends, but I like that it makes you think. It leaves you with the authors whole point, that something can’t be everything.

Thank you NetGalley!

Don't worry about the basketball-focus on Liv and Mack and their relationship. This coming of age tale set in a small town in Pennsylvania in 2004 is timeless. These two young women are evolving in their understanding of themselves and their attraction to each other. Basketball is their place the place they can disappear from the disapproval of those around them. It's beautifully written. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. This will speak to many readers.