Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!


This was soooo SWOONY! I blew through this in one sitting and was so sad when it ended. I've recently started reading sports romances to see what all the hype was about and I'm definitely hooked, and The Long Game is for sure one of my favorites. Soccer romance is underrated and I'd love to see more of them! Adalyn and Cameron were both awesome characters and I adored them both - I also loved that this was a rare instance of the grumpy/grumpy trope (Grumpy/Sunshine will always be my favorite but I enjoyed this for a change)

The kids were a lot of fun too. They had hilarious but realistic personalities. Sometimes authors portray kids in such a weird and unrealistic way which tends to bother me but that wasn't the case here.

Elena Armas is officially one of my must read authors and I can't wait for her next one!

Overall, this book was fine. I really loved the character development, and their budding romance was too cute!! What I found mildly annoying was that it took way too long to figure out what happened with Adalyn snapping and leading up to the big meltdown, and also why Cameron became such a recluse. Sure it added to their relationship and gaining their trust, but as a reader it was kinda annoying and I felt like it would have been better had we not waited until like 60-75% of the book for it to come out.

I also love me a slow burn but after as while it was annoying. When the spice finally came up it felt super rushed and poorly written that it took a little away imo

Will I read something from this author again? Sure! Did I absolutely love this book? I've read better

A solid 3 stars!

I loved this story!! I wasn’t sure what to expect at first as a sports romance but after the first chapter I was hooked!! This book was equal parts swoon and sexy for me. Thank you Net Galley for the ARC.

I loved every single second of this one. I have never read any of Elena Armas's books before and this was AMAZING. The writing built such a beautiful setting and the tension was TANGIBLE from the first second that Adalyn and Cameron met. I loved Cameron, the way he took care of Adalyn and how grumpy but also sunshine he was. I loved Maria and the bond she developed with Adalyn. I can't wait for the next book!

so, i really feel like i had to sit and think about this book before deciding exactly what i was going to rate it. process everything that did and didn’t happen. in some moments i loved cameron and adalyn. in others i felt completely ambivalent towards their romance, their story.

i think my main annoyance came with how long adalyn hid her reason for being sent to green oak to cameron. and cameron was honestly totally okay with her telling things on her own time. but then the second the roles were reversed and cameron didn’t tell adalyn about the club sale for one (1) day, it caused a fairly big argument. it kind of felt frustrating to see how that played out between them. and while, yes, they didn’t break up in that typical sense you see in most romance books. they didn’t not break up either??? i guess, cameron was so damn patient with adalyn, and she didn’t really ever give him much back. he literally would always lay things out on the line, think of her, and she would almost never do the same back. she would think it. acknowledge it. but then say something completely opposite to how she felt. and this went on until the last 5% of the book.

on to the soccer/football aspect of the story. i know its tough for an author to decide how much they’re going to share about it. especially in a romance book, when that’s not really the main point of the story. neither of them really play, its not a rivals story. but i do wish we had a bit more. we only learn of like three of the girls’ names, and only ever interact with maria after the first scene. i honestly wish we got to see more of the team, the practices, the games. but also, i personally didn’t love maria’s character that much either. so… i’m torn.

i think bottom line, while i might not have enjoyed all the aspects of this book. objectively, this might have to be armas’ strongest book so far. you can clearly tell the structure and storyline are so much cleaner than her debut and sophomore novels were. and with the ending/epilogue. i am definitely intrigued enough to read onto josie x matthew.

I love the "workaholic forced to spend time in a slow small town" trope, and it's been a while since I read one! This town was full of fun quirks: the kids' soccer team, the cat, the goats, you name it. The soccer players were the best part, and I wish we got more scenes with them.

I haven't seen Ted Lasso, but the Ted Lasso/Schitt's Creek comparisons feel apt. This was an easy town to fall in love with, and I'm excited that this is going to be a series!

I knew right away that I’d love this book. The writing is fantastic and Adalyn + Cameron were the perfect main characters. The tension between them was 👌 and they made a great team. I also adored the side characters 🥹 especially Adalyn’s best friend Matthew and the little league players — all of their nicknames for Coach Cameron gave me life 🤣

Read if you like —
⚽️ Ted Lasso + It Happened One Summer
⚽️ small town romances
⚽️ dual POVs
⚽️ enemies to lovers
⚽️ forced proximity

If you've read a few reviews before getting to mine, I'm sure you've seen the comment that this is a slow burn romance, and I'm here to say the same. While I enjoy a slower burn to my romance novels, this one was a bit too drawn out for me. I think part of the issue was the repetitive nature of the interaction. Lots of wrist rubbing and face touching.. and if one of the characters ''hummed'' one more damn time, I was ready to throw my Kindle.
I didn't really get the enemies part of the trope since it seemed like such a minor thing to be enemies about.. I did like the small town vibe and sort of forced proximity trope. Cameron was refreshing as a love interest, Adalyn was a bit hard to connect to. Overall, it was a solid read. It didn't blow my socks off, but I enjoyed my time with it.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced digital copy in order to read and review.

Unfortunately this one just didn’t do it for me. This book was a SUPER slow burn, but I didn’t get any of the angsty will they/won’t they to make it bearable. And once they finally get together, everything else felt way too rushed. I would have loved a little more chemistry between the two main characters overall. There were also a few plot points that felt a little far fetched (including the totally random reveal at the end???), and I didn’t have any juicy tension to distract me from them. All in all, it was ok book, but not my favorite.

Read if you like:
🏘️ Small Town Romances
⚽️ Soccer
🖋️ Tattooed MMC’s
🥵 Tension and Banter
😡 Enemies to Lovers
🏠 Forced Proximity
🐐 Softie MMC’s

This one is a slow burn romance filled with tension and banter that makes the rest ohhhh was sooo worth it!!!

The small town vibes with Adalyn being banished to a small town to oversee a girls soccer team in order to get good press for her Dad’s professional team after a major mess up was such a fun way of bringing big city Ice Queen Adalyn to a small town and everything that comes with the small town dynamics.

I really loved the growth of the relationship between Adalyn and Cam. The way the two dropped their high walls with each other and getting both their POV’s throughout the book made it even better!

I loved all the small town vibes, the kids from the soccer team, the meddling of some of the people in the small town, and how they both had their demons that landed them both in this small town, and all the animals.

Thank you so much, Atria for my ARC in exchange for my review!

City girl ends up in the sticks running around in heels and ends up falling for the handsome dark stranger who rescues her from her blunders. Mix that with a forced living situation and you have a cute (and spicy) rom com. I wanted a bit more meat from the premise of the story, the soccer took a back burner to their meet cutes a little bit too much.

Wow!!!!
Cameron was really a delight character I really loved the way he was portrayed!
Adalyn was a strong character and I really love the way she was portrayed too, their relationship and the slow burn was AMAZING like wow.
4/5

I read the Spanish love deception a couple years back and I wasn’t a fan of it. I really thought this book would be different but it wasn’t. I couldn’t connect to the characters or the plot. Maybe the author just isn’t for me.

Elena Armas has had me hooked since her first book, The Spanish Love Deception, and this book is no exception. Once I got my hands on The Long Game, I paused all reading and flew through it in two days.

You’re gonna love this one, if you’re into the following: enemies-to-lovers trope, strong female characters, soccer and (the sweetest) soccer players, fun banter, the romance, great secondary characters, small town feel, and more! This is all right up my alley and if it is up yours too, you’ll love the book!

While this wasn’t my favorite of Elena Armas’s three books so far, I do think she is queen of the slow burn! When Adalyn is shipped away to a remote mountain town after an embarrassing viral incident at work, she just wants to keep her head down & get her job done so she can return to Miami. In her way, of course, is Cam, a recently retired professional soccer player. While they butt heads at first, they realize they can tolerate working together since their goals are the same.

The side characters are fun - I hope Josie gets her own book! - and the kid characters well drawn too (love love love María). Very enjoyable read.

From the author of "The Spanish Love Deception" and "The American Roommate Experiment" comes "The Long Game", a hot sports romance. Daughter of pro soccer club owner, Adalyn Reyes is in the middle of a social media disaster. In order to minimize the damage, her father sends her to small town North Carolina to help coach a U10 girls soccer team. It's there that she meets retired soccer star and fellow soccer coach Cameron Caldani. Love at first sight? Hardly.

This sports romance has a ton of popular and fun tropes, including enemies to lovers, forced proximity, and small town romance. However, the slow burn on this book almost killed me. The chemistry between Adalyn and Cam is out of this world and I could hardly keep myself from skipping ahead out of pure anticipation. But the wait was worth every filthy thing that came out of Cam's mouth once we all got there. Honestly, that man should come with a warning label. My first Armas book, "The Spanish Love Deception", had me falling in love with Aaron Blackford from the beginning and this book was no different. I'm not a soccer fan, but that didn't matter when I read this book. Cameron Caldani hit all the right spots in the best ways and cemented Armas as an auto-buy author for me from now on.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Elena Armas for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed this book and I loved Cameron and Adalyn's characters, especially with how they interacted with each other. This was such a slow burn romance, and it was definitely the right choice for the characters because of their history, and I thought it was also a good move to not really have a third act breakup because that wouldn't have fit with the rest of their story arc. The one thing that I didn't like was how their backstory and past trauma was discussed and brought into the plot, because it was only vaguely mentioned for most of the book and then very quickly talked about and not really mentioned again (especially in Cameron's case). Other than that, this was a fun read and I especially loved how central the setting and all of the side characters were.

Elena does it again! I was such a fan of her first book, The Spanish Love Deception. I am not surprised at how much I loved this one. Ada and Cam! My heart aches for them. I really loved both of these characters so much. This was my first soccer romance, if it can even be categorized as such. And I really liked all of the other stories that were intertwined with the main plot. Ada's dad is terrible. I know sometimes we need a villain in the story, but I don't understand how some people treat their children. It made my heart melt that Cam was always ready to have her back even though she was strong enough to fight her own battles.

I can't wait for the next book by Elena Armas.

This book was cute and fun to read! I really enjoyed myself and thing that if people liked The Spanish Love Deception they will love this from the same author!

4.5 ⭐️

I loved this book, I loved the characters, I love the small town trope. Cameron might be one of my favorite book boyfriends ever. Love love love!