⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

⚾️Ya Romance
✉️Sapphic
⚾️Enemies to Lovers
✉️Grief
⚾️Secret Relationship

Thank you to Penguin Teen the ARC.

This was a cute young adult romance. I thought this book was cozy with lots of drama and was a fast read. I enjoyed the sports aspects of the story! I loved that it was a sapphic romance. The enemies turned to lovers really fast. No spice. Very cute romantic parts. The character change and grow. The grief they both go through was written very well. The clear difference in how each of the families are dealing with their grief was also written well. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a YA sapphic romance.

It was hard for me to believe in the romance of the two characters since one was always mean towards the other. Their relationship is not equal and healthy.

Brought me back to my travel softball days. There’s a sense of nostalgia to this book that kept making me pick it back up despite the slower last third of the book. The relationship conflicts were messy but relatable. Not my favorite Dugan book but worth a read nonetheless.

This one did not do it for me. It read more like middle grade than YA, and both central characters were flawed in ways that felt un-redeemable. It did not feel like a YA love story; rather it felt like two high schoolers with personal issues who crossed paths. Ultimately it was not my favorite and I likely would not recommend my peers read it, unfortunately.

Playing For Keeps is a refreshing YA queer romance that doesn’t center on coming out or sexuality. However, it reads more like middle grade, with easily solvable problems and off-pacing. The anticipated enemies-to-lovers plot resolves too quickly. Overall, it feels like a draft needing more development.

A YA sapphic romance between two girls, both who have experienced grief and loss of a loved one starring a baseball pitcher and a student umpire who are definitely not supposed to fall for one another.

Ivy is a student umpire who lost her brother to cancer is experiencing guilt due to her mother’s pressure for her to go to college since her brother didn't get to.

June is a star baseball pitcher for her high school team, she lost her mother to cancer and her father is pressuring her to be the breadwinner of their family by securing a college scholarship and eventually going pro. However, she is also dealing with an injury that hasn't properly healed.

A gripping rivals to lovers about two girls who fall for each other amist their grief and parental pressure. I really enjoyed the rivals to lovers & that the author focused on women in sports, specifically being injured. I would pick up this author again because I liked her characters and writing. This book had me glued to the page!


CW: Death of a parent to cancer; Cancer; death of a sibling to cancer; medical content; sports injury; panic attack (on page)

I think this one is on me. I have read other Jennifer Dugan books and they’ve been exceptionally… meh. They’re not bad by any means but not great and that’s exactly how I feel about this as well.

Overall it’s aggressively fine. It’s supposed to be rivals to lovers but they almost immediately are into each other. There’s some heavy grief in here which I wasn’t prepared for. And it just felt undeveloped and underwhelming

All of my qualms with this book come from my bias against high school romance. This book was wonderful otherwise it was so fluffy and such a good read. Dugan is paving the way for sapphic romances!

1.5 stars

I feel so bad giving this such a low rating, especially having read it in June. I just could not connect to the character's relationship to care. I liked Ivy, I felt for her, and that girl deserved better than June and no one can tell me otherwise. June was a wrecking ball and needs to do some work on herself before she can pursue anything. And Ivy has her problems too, for which I recommend therapy, but I also kind of saw myself in her a bit so that probably helped me like her. I will say, the ref dream she had really threw me off at first, certainly wasn't something I was expecting but its her thing so I can't judge. I did like the little feminist undertones to both Ivy and June's goals, truly iconic to see. And there were parts near the end where I started to get invested in their struggles, because it was getting tense. So there were some parts that I could enjoy.

DNF at 10%

I was doing okay with the plot until it got to their first date at the restaurant. It just seemed like they were completely morally opposed to each other that any chance of them ending up together seemed totally unrealistic.

This was a good book. I normally don't read this type of genre, but I did enjoy it. I would recommend this book to my family and friends.

This book had so much potential. A sapphic rivals-to-lovers sports romance, that's normally exactly my kind of book. The plot idea is interesting, especially the part with Ivy wanting to become a professional umpire, but most of the rest of the book didn't work for me.

First of all it's not rivals-to-lovers. June and Ivy don't like each other when they first interact, but they get together by their third meeting.

Second there's too much telling and not enough showing. Ivy and June recap a few times what they've done together off-page, but because the reader doesn't experience those things it makes it hard to get invested in their relationship. It also would've helped to understand why they loved each other.

Playing for Keeps was a sweet YA book. The characters were somewhat exaggerated and didn’t seem fully realistic, but it didn’t bother me enough for me to not like the book. I will say, I think this was a less memorable sports romance though. The miscommunication between the main characters was frustrating but understandable for individuals of this age.
Overall, this book was just okay for me. I just was not a huge fan of the dynamic between June and Ivy. There is an inherent imbalance of power between the two even though they were the same age and I just didn’t like that. I also just genuinely don’t think they should have ended up together. So while I don’t think the writing was bad, I wasn’t a fan of the story.

June, the star pitcher of a baseball team, and Ivy, an aspiring professional officiant, face off and fall for each other in this rivals to girlfriends story. I loved how this was a story about two young women breaking boundaries in the sports world and navigating their growing feelings for each other. It's full of romance tropes, including secret dating, with high stakes for both love interests.

3.5 stars rounded down


Playing for Keeps is a cute Sapphic YA book starring a baseball player and an umpire. I enjoyed the dynamics of the two girls, since they both were fighting for places in male dominated spaces. It added a unique quality to the story, which I appreciated. The girls each are struggling with the loss of a family member to cancer (one a brother, the other a mother), which lent to complexities within their personalities and position within their respective families.

The book did contain two tropes that I despise: insta- love and the miscommunication in the 3rd act. Neither took away from the overall story, they are just common tropes that are overused. The girls are also pretty immature at times, but honestly, I think that made them seem more real, because let's face it: teenagers are immature.

This was my first book read by Jennifer Dugan, but it definitely won't be the last.

The premise of Playing for Keeps excited me as a baseball fan. Sapphic authors have only just started tapping into the potential of sports romance so I was pumped to see a big name author like Jennifer diving into the genre. Unfortunately, this ended up being a total train wreck.

I honestly think that with some restructuring this could have been a sold contemporary novel. I really liked June and Ivy as individual characters and their struggles with their families/ dreams were the most interesting parts of this book. However, not once did I buy into the romance. They were a toxic incompatible mess, completely underdeveloped and simply lackluster in execution. It felt like we skimmed over the actually falling in love moments in favor of all the fights. We were never given the chance to become invested in their romance to help weather the rough patches. Instead, I was actively begging them to break up and go their separate ways.

It was really annoying how Ivy’s storyline took the back burner to June’s, especially since June’s issues dominating their relationship was one of the major conflicts of the book. I love flawed messy characters, and if this was a contemporary novel then I would have loved delving more into June’s characterization. But because this is a romance novel her issues simply overshadowed the romance and Ivy. Super bummed by this one.

I read Veronica Comics back in 2020 and really enjoyed it, but Melt With You and Dugan’s new novel Playing for Keeps just haven’t met my expectations.

I just don’t feel like the writing is as strong in this one? I found myself skimming quite a bit while reading. It all felt a little predictable, like your typical sports story, but also with some miscommunication, secret dating, and teens dealing with high expectations from parents who have experienced extreme grief. Like the parents were also predictable, SO intense through most of the novel, but they turn around so quickly in the end.

Overall this novel was just sort of fine, and I’ll continue to read this author in hopes that her novels will one day live up to the first one I read.

Thank you @netgalley and @penguinteen for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I liked Jennifer Dugan’s last couple of books, especially Love at First Set, but I had mixed feelings about Playing for Keeps. I was intrigued by the premise and am always a fan of enemies to lovers, but I felt things escalated rather quickly and their relationship felt more like insta-love rather than naturally developed chemistry, which was a big letdown for me.

I did enjoy how June and Ivy were able able to connect over the grief of losing a loved one to cancer and the emotional depth that added to the story. Otherwise I thought the character development was adequate but nothing special or unexpected. Honestly I think one of the best things about this book was that Ivy was a baseball ref, a storyline I had never read before and let’s face it, we need more women officiants period!

While personally I prefer Ms. Dugan’s non-YA romances, this is overall a decent read if you’re craving a YA sports romance that features dealing with grief and is sweeter than it is spicy. 3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

This book was a cute heart-felt rom-com! It was very YA though, which I don't think I'm the audience for any more. But I would have loved this one when I was in high school! Very cute cover too.

I received this book for free for an honest review from netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity

I love this author and her writing.