This book felt a lot more sports heavy than romance heavy and as a sports romance reader I like it to be opposite. I got really bored with the storyline snd was hoping for more romance.

I recently got into sports romances, so I was very excited to read this book! Although I have no desire to play sports, this book made me question that. I loved the chemistry between the two characters and the whole setting was very realistic.

I love a queer romance. I love a sports romance. So I was pretty excited to hop into Kallie Emblidge's Two Left Feet - an MM soccer romance that I hoped would scratch that itch. Unfortunately, it didn't totally hit for me. I had a little trouble with the characterization of the protagonist, Oliver. In theory, I understand being hot and cold with a younger player who may be there to take your job, but the way it played out felt somewhat contrived. As the two got closer, I did get more invested in the story and the characters, but then Oliver would lash out again in a way that just didn't totally track for me. I'm not anti-conflict in romance novels, I just think it could have used another pass in the edit to make it make more sense.

Thanks to Dell and NetGalley for the ARC!

I got about 15% into this, but it was a struggle to get even that far, and it did not draw me in. There were so many characters to keep track of and the "enemies" aspect felt forced. DNF.

I’ve always had a soft spot for cute sports romance books—but queer sports romance? That’s where my heart truly lies. There’s something especially compelling about watching two teammates navigate the line between competition, camaraderie, and unexpected connection. And that’s exactly what we get with Oliver and Leonardo.

Their romance is a true slow burn—don’t expect sparks to fly on page one. In fact, their story is defined by restraint, hesitance, and the quiet ache of wanting something you’re not sure you’re allowed to have. Set in the early 2000s, the stakes feel heavier, the silences louder. Neither Oliver nor Leonardo is ready to admit what they feel—not to each other, and certainly not to their team. But oh, the glances. The quiet moments. The stolen seconds of closeness. Every beat of their growing connection is beautifully paced and emotionally rich.

And when that emotional dam finally breaks? It’s all the more satisfying because of how carefully it was built up. Every scene between them had me hooked, and I found myself rooting for them harder with every chapter.

If you love slow-burn romance, teammates-to-lovers tension, and stories that balance athletic ambition with tender, queer intimacy, then this book is for you. Oliver and Leonardo’s story stayed with me long after the final whistle.

I really loved this book! It's a single POV, which I actually quite enjoy in romance from time to time, and both characters are so wonderful. I love the trope when there's an up-and-comer who has to team up with a longtime legend and this delivers that in a beautiful way. There's also a great deal of honesty about the world we live in - vis-a-vis gay athletes - but it isn't so depressing to completely ruin the vibes.

It runs a touch long and sometimes the pacing felt inconsistent, but all around I quite enjoyed it! 4 stars, thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

As a bisexual, former football player, I LOVEEE stories about queer football players. If nothing else but for the sole reason of being able to understand the jargon, plus knowing when the author has a surface level knowledge of the sport lol.

Two left feet was a beautiful book to read. The prose just sucks you into the world of football in the English scene and the characters were so fun too. I was particularly fond of Oliver, and not only because the entire book is in his point of view. Oliver's struggles with choosing between coming out and football, both things that make him so happy, was so palpable my chest hurt. I loved seeing him navigate his yearning for Leo and his daily life with the other important people to him like his mom and best friend. I don't have much to say about Leo because again, most of the book is from Oliver's point of view and he's so smitten with Leo that I as the reader had no choice but to love him too!

My only issue is that I wish we'd gotten more intimate moments, conversations between Oliver and Leo so that I'd be more invested in them both as characters and as a couple. There were a lot of time skips to important matches and events and it felt like their relationship development was far too much in the backseat, if that makes sense.

I devoured this in the span of 4 hours, that's how much I enjoyed it.

<b><i>Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review</i></b>

To me, a sign of a great book is when I can know next-to-nothing about major themes for a book and still end up absolutely engrossed. That’s how it was with this book—I know very little about football and yet found myself eagerly devouring every word of this book. What an amazing debut and I can’t wait to read more work from this author!

I will always love a queer soccer (football) romance book. This one was great in that it differed from ones read in the past and I love the plot of the injured player coaching and eventually falling for his "replacement". It is always hard to read the reality that many athletes stay closeted for safety but I am glad that they overcame that in this story! Emblidge did a great job with helping the reader understand more about the professional league in the UK and the politics that surround the decisions made.

There was a couple of things that were a bit hard to get through as someone who grew up playing soccer (football) and that is the fact they weren't at the games supporting the team while injured. Those who are injured are still part of the team and would not be in a pub drinking while their team plays, they would be on the sideline supporting them.

Thank you Netgalley, Kallie Emblidge, and Dell for the ARC!

I'm not a fan of football but do enjoy a sports romance. This one was very nearly a DNF for me as the beginning was so football focused and kind of chunky to get through. Somewhere around the halfway point it turned though and I was hooked. The romance was sweet and I was glad for the characters and their HEA.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I never hate a book about professional athletes falling in love :) The stakes here are what you expect: what happens when two soccer stars fall in love and have to keep it secret?

Oliver is the more established star and has more to lose; Leo has a promising career but has a harder time accepting that they have to keep it a secret. There are also some additional stakes around the team's performance for the season, which starts to suffer due to Oliver and Leo's disagreements about their relationship.

The book is structured around a season of soccer and builds to the final big game, which is a structure that never fails for me :)

NetGalley ARC, review shared on Goodreads 9/4.

what a delight this book was!! the writing started off a little slow for me in the sense that the writing is very detailed with long sentences and paragraphs, but once it got going i was enraptured! the dialogue is very reminiscent of the train of thought of an anxious person whose brain is going a million miles a minute (speaking from experience lol)

oliver and leo’s story felt so real and raw, the banter was unmatched as well as the emotions. i laughed out loud at certain passages, and the emotions felt were portrayed extremely realistically. i absolutely loved reading their story, even as someone who knows pretty much nothing about football. both of them were grade-A yearners, no notes 🫡

thank u to netgalley and the publisher

As a big sports romance reader (especially MM), this was one I’d been looking forward to — and overall, it delivered with a few caveats. If you like football, slow burns, and the classic push-pull of almost moments, you’ll enjoy this one.
The start was a bit slow for me, and the repeated “almosts” got frustrating after a while, but that’s also what makes a slow burn work. Once I hit the last 40%, though, we started moving! The intimacy finally landed, and those scenes were worth the wait. I especially loved Oliver’s relationship with his mom and that heart-to-heart on the anniversary of his father’s death had me yelling at him to just tell her! Same with the coming-out moment with his coach. Both hit hard emotionally.
Leo was a standout: grumpy sunshine vibes (not quite golden retriever, but close) and a great balance of confidence and vulnerability. The way he shared the weight of the big matches gave him extra depth (Especially for the sunshine in the grumpy/sunshine) and his dynamic with Oliver really worked once they both admitted what was really going on.
As a whole, this story isn’t breaking new ground. Homophobia in sports and internalized struggles are familiar territory in MM romance but I think it’s important that trad publishing is giving space to these narratives. That progress matters, and I’d encourage anyone who wants to see more of that in trad pub to pick this one up.
The ending tied everything together beautifully, and I set my kindle down feeling satisfied. Solid 4 stars from me!

I'm going to start by saying: I love a sports romance, and I'm British.

There are a few problems with this book, the biggest is that it fails at being a romance because it's so caught up in the football -- only to show a marked lack of knowledge about football, especially British football history.

I realise this isn't final and we're not supposed to quote, but I can't explain the problems with this book without quoting, unfortunately.

There was a gay football player. His name was Justin Fashanu. The media ate him alive and nothing ended well for him. There's a reason so many sports have out athletes and top flight men's football in the UK is so far behind. They've seen what can happen and it's not pretty. So for a book to have a blurb that says this, "He’s always kept a tight lid on his sexuality in a league that’s never had a player come out." is really disingenuous. You can argue the premier league didn't exist until 1992, and he came out in 1990, but then to call on semantics like that is a bit gross. There are a few other mentions, like this:

"The press would crucify me, I would never play again, and my life would be over. No one’s ever done this, not at my level, and even anyone who wasn’t any good still had their whole lives fucked up when they tried . It’s not, like, fun for me to lie about this,"

"There were no gay men in the Premier League when Oliver’s career began, nor in any other top flight in any country, and technically there aren’t any now either , because he’s not telling. Someone tried once, in the nineties, but he never made a team sheet again."

Now, Justin Fashanu came out in an exclusive with The Sun, one of the newspapers here, and they didn't really help anything. It was just all kinds of, well... here's a quote from the gay times in 1991 about the sun article: "The Sun dragged out the tale with titillating stories of sexual encounters with unnamed MPs, football players and pop stars, which, he claims, were largely untrue."

So, given that context imagine my surprise to see this quote: "Willem is waiting by his locker in a way that suggests he would’ve been better off giving a tell-all interview to The Sun after all."

I've seen other football books handle this much better. Much better. I think the publishers really need to take a look about how they handle this and perhaps have some edits.

I believe the author is American and it really shows. I happened to grow up in the area this is set in, and if someone asks where I'm from outside of London I'll say London, within London I'll say Camden, and within Camden I'll say Gospel Oak. People from outside of London seem to forget how dense it is, an how much people are from *their* area, especially if they've grown up there. So the fact a kid from Chalk Farm keeps telling people he's from Camden when he's standing in Camden is infuriating. But actually, none of this is my gripe. This is a minor niggle that I've fallen down.

There are other pieces, like one player telling another they're only 2km away or so from each other. We use miles. In London I'd argue minutes makes more sense, because of transport routes and density. The slang just is never quite right, some terms are out dated, and some aren't used correctly.

And now the other piece that makes me think the author hasn't done their research properly. There was a massive scandal where the England football manager, glenn hoddle, was fired for comments he made about people being disabled because of things they'd done in past lives. There's a lot of back and forth about if it was misconstrued, etc, but the basis is: he was fired. Guess what is a throwaway quote in the book?

“Do you think in a past life I did something so unforgivable that I’m still being punished for it, all this time later?”

Yeah. Christ on a bike.

I really think this book needs to be proofed by someone with extensive experience of London, and also solid knowledge of English football.

The bits above would have been enough to knock it down to a 3*, however... the romance is lacking. There are walls and walls of text, there's no focus on the relationship it's all on the football and... please see above for why that doesn't work. Side characters aren't real, they're just flat props of people.

Honestly, as this book is now I just can't recommend it.

I tried hard to love this one. Kudos to the author for an intriguing premise and unique setting that didn't feel as predictable as most other sports romances I've read. Sadly, this one wasn't that memorable for me. It took me a long, long time to get past the first few chapters, which were SO long. The writing style felt clunky and I had to reread some sentences. The romance was cute, but the "we can't do this" and then they do it anyway got to be very predictable. I struggled to connect with the characters, although this was partly due to the third person POV, which is not my preference.

If you enjoy MM romances and football, give this one a try. And huge props to the designer for a stunning cover.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dell for the ARC.

This wasn't a perfect book, but for a debut, WOW. I loved that, on top of the standard MM romance tropes, there were some simply lyrical lines. I was reading an ARC, so this may change (I hope not!), but things like: "Leo's brown eyes are a sea of black now, his whole face a gulp. If Oliver stays, he'll make an idiot of himself. He leaves Leo on the dancefloor with the rest of his drink and Oliver's whole heart beating bloody and useless in his palm." I could quibble with the ableism (intelligence-related ableism is so entrenched in our language!), but that imagery left me breathless.

I also liked the way Oliver is rooted in his hometown. I would have liked to see a bit more of that, see people's reactions to him off the pitch (is that right?) and get a better feel for how important he is to them in addition to the other way around. I think that would have upped the stakes even more.

On the whole, though, this was a delight, and I can't wait to see what this author writes next. Four-plus stars from me.

My thanks to the publisher/NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

This book is an absolutely delightful breath of fresh air. I finished it while standing in a packed Green Line train (Boston public transit), stuck behind a disabled train and late to my afternoon plans, and I am barely bothered by it, still grinning like a Cheshire cat and filled with joy five minutes later.

The only thing I know about football (soccer) is that you can’t touch the ball with your hands unless you’re the goalie (I still do not know if Camden is a real team), but this book was still right up my alley in how well it captures sports team spirit and dynamics. The writing is excellent; easy to read, lightly humorous, and not a single word wasted. The characters are well built and dynamic, and Oliver and Leo’s relationship feels so real.

Overall, highly recommend!

I received a copy of two left feet in exchange for my honest review. What a cute book. Unlike a lot of other sports romances this one deviates from the stereotypical “silent angry type” meets “sunshine” questions his sexuality and falls in love. I appreciated that a lot. Oliver knows who he is. I also appreciated the lack of 3rd act break up. Overall this was a cute story about risking what you love for who you love.

So much to love about this sports romance, and such a wonderful debut novel! I don’t know much about football, but I know enough to tell you I loved this book! Leo and Oliver will stick with me!

I am a sucker for a sports romance. I actually preordered the physical copy of this book before receiving the ARC and I’m very happy that I did. This was really cute. There was definitely a lot of football and football related info/references, but that’s something I actually prefer in a sports romance, especially when both main characters are athletes. I thought the characters were all very likable, however I wish some of the side characters (and their relationships with Oliver) were fleshed out a bit more. For example, Oliver obviously has a deep friendship with Joe, but we don’t get a lot of information as to how that came about/why Joe is so important to him. It took a bit for me to get into, but once I was in it I was hooked. Overall, this was an enjoyable read and I’m looking forward to seeing what Kallie Emblidge will release next. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!