A Sharp Endless Need is the kind of coming-of-age literary fiction I love to read: vibrant, bright and brimming with emotion, poignant without feeling overwrought, and featuring characters so real and so sympathetic that the pages practically vibrate with their energy.

Mack is reeling from the loss of her beloved father when she meets Liv, a recent transfer to her school and a new teammate on the varsity girls’ basketball team. Mack is a highly scouted D-1 prospect, and there are few players who can match her skill on the court – but Liv does. And it soon becomes clear that Mack and Liv have just as much chemistry off the court as they do on it.

I happen to love basketball, but that’s not at all a requirement for enjoying A Sharp Endless Need. The way Marisa Crane brings the game to life with their prose is so engaging, conveying the frenetic pace, the passion it inspires in its players, and the strong bonds forged among teammates in such a high pressure environment. But even though basketball is so central to the plot, it’s not really what this book is about. This is the story of a teenager who is struggling: with her grief, with her sexuality and gender identity, with the looming decisions she has to make about her future. She is consumed by sadness, by complex feelings of longing and desire, and by indecision. Mack tells her story from the perspective of an adult looking back on that time in her life, so there’s an element of nostalgia and vulnerability to the telling – an inherent gentleness in the way she treats her younger self and the younger version of Liv. The book is set in the early 2000s, when I was in high school myself, so that just added to the nostalgia for me.

A Sharp Endless Need is very specifically a teen lesbian basketball romance, but its themes are universal: self-discovery, grief and acceptance, first love, complex family dynamics. Crane hits on something incredibly true in this story, and I’ll be thinking about it – especially the bittersweet ending – for a long time. Thank you to The Dial Press for the complimentary reading opportunity.

(4.5 Stars)

I just knew from the opening passages that this was really gonna land for me, and I was right, because I was just swept up in this story’s momentum from start to finish.

There’s a magnetism and an urgency to the writing, especially because of where the characters are in their lives. There’s uncertainty, there’s fear, there’s this desperation the characters feel to both just be enough and also transcend above what they’ve been allowed to be up to this point.

Basketball, as both a plot point and a metaphor, is such a beautiful vehicle for this story to explore all of those things. It’s really successful as a driving force behind the story, as an element that allows the story to hang together, because without it, I think the story would feel much more meandering and perhaps even pointless. And again, the sport is just a really effective framing device, because it’s a game that’s as much about luck as it is about skill. It’s a game that doesn’t always love its players back, it’s an unforgiving game where one mistake or one injury can leave you with nothing. And the story does a great job of exploring who the characters truly are both with and without the sport.

And at the end of the day, I feel like this story is really about what it means to hunger not just for success, but for validation. In what ways do we define ourselves and in what ways do we allow ourselves to be defined by the people in our lives, the things we allow our identity to become tied up in, and our circumstances? And in trying to find those answers and navigate those questions, the characters don’t always turn to the right things. They don’t always make the right choices. They set themselves up for failure or even punish themselves because they don’t know what the right thing is. And I appreciate the story for giving them that agency and that space.

Something I don’t want to forget to touch on is the fact that the story is also using basketball as a means to explore gender and the stereotypical relationship between female athletes and masculinity. That’s a really big topic that, frankly, I don’t have the time or energy or language to unpack in this moment. But a lot of female athletes are assigned markers of masculinity in order to quote-unquote “justify” their relationship to sport, or they’re expected to exchange their femininity for credibility in order to be respected accepted in the world of sports. And, of course, female athletes are no more or less feminine simply *because* they play sports, but that’s still a power dynamic at play when it comes to athletic spaces.

And the stereotype actually works out in Mack’s favor, in this case, because she’s afforded that ambiguity, she’s allowed to explore her masculinity and her relationship to gender because she exists in that liminal space—which is another reason why she’s so obsessively devoted to the sport, even if she can’t name it.

I also think it’s important to keep in mind that this is uncontestedly adult fiction. It is about teenagers and it’s a really powerful coming-of-age narrative, but it’s told from an adult perspective and it’s written for adults. That said, though, I think this definitely has crossover potential—no pun intended—because if you read a lot of YA or you’re part of the YA demographic but you’re looking for something a bit more mature, something to transition you to adult fiction, this could be a great choice.

I think it’s obvious that I had a great time with this. Dani Martineck also truly made a *meal* of the audiobook. The way they express heartache and desperation was so incredibly believable. You just feel their performance deep in your bones. This is definitely a new favorite and I think I would give it four-and-a-half stars.

I love women's sports and so I was very excited for a queer sports literary romance/coming of age story! I really enjoyed this and felt that the longing between Liv & Mack was so visceral and engaging. I also loved the basketball details and how it showed the pressure put on student athletes and exposes the gritty side of college sports and the impact they have. While the book did work for me, I do feel like the amount of detail about basketball will turn off some readers who are not into sports.

While I think that the representation this book has is super important, I didn’t really love reading something so sexually graphic about 17 year olds. I do think that the coming of age in a midsize town, especially when you’re not straight, can be a really hard experience, and this book did a great job showing what that experience can look like. The addition of elite level basketball and adding in the recruiting process really added to the story, as well as Liv and Mack’s relationship. Overall, I would recommend, since I think the story it tells is very well-written and worth reading.

Thank you to Dial Press and Netgalley for the advanced copy!

I have to admit, this book was a slog to get through.

After the death of her father Mack Morris finds herself drawn to new student t Liv Cooper. Basketball players, they just click on the court, but away from the games they find themselves tangled together in a sort-of romance...

I'm not sure if it was the characters, plot or writing style but I really had to struggle to finish this one. Just did NOT work for me at all.

Queer basketball love in a small town.

Poetic but not pretentious, heavy and raw, slow and quiet. This writing style often works for me but in this case I think it just didn't resonate personally. A Sharp Endless Need offers a deep dive into themes of love, loss, and identity. However, its introspective style and pacing may not appeal to everyone. If you're drawn to character-driven stories with a nostalgic 2000s setting, it might be worth a read. For me, though, it didn't quite hit the mark.

Ended up not finishing this. Dnf at 21%. Read too many teenage coming of age stories recently and this just fell flat. Although if you love basketball and have a parental death to process this would be a good read for you.

A poignant sharp tongued coming of age novel about a young queer basketball star. It’s sort of like the gapers delay when there’s a wreck on the highway. Slow moving, meandering, ill advised but that moment when you see with stunning clarity how quickly things can go wrong and you drive just a little more carefully on the way home. A story about the terror of potential, what does it mean? What if you can’t live up to it? What if the heights you’ve imagined are out of reach? Controlled chaos, daily doses of self destruction and a deep hunger characterize our protagonist, Mack. As I close the book I already miss her, and I will be thinking of her for quite some time.

Pefect for fans of Love and Basketball' and for those who loved 'Lie with me' by Philippe Besson. This book is heartbreakingly amazing. I loved how slow burn this book was and how GAY it was. I'd never read a lesbian love story and I'm kicking myself Mack and Liv were realized characters who felt real. The ending, broke my heart but I understand why it was done. But, my goodness Marisa Crane—you've done an amazing job!

A Sharp Endless Need is a poignant and brutally nostalgic coming-of-age novel that expertly explores the intersections of elite athletics, queerness, and drugs in early 2000s middle America. It is the type of book that sinks its claws immediately into your jugular and refuses to let up until you’ve finished every last word. Fans of Sirens & Muses, and Rana Joon and the One and Only Now, you are in the right place.

Mackenzie, “Mak”, now an adult, recalling the story of her adolescence is the lens through which we experience this story. A high school senior on track to go D1 in college for basketball, Mak has never experienced anything casually. She’s addicted to the high of the game, roaring fans, and immortality of the jersey. But when her dad, and biggest supporter, dies unexpectedly, she is unsure if she’ll ever be able to play properly again. That is, until she meets Liv, a transfer student whose skills rival hers. On the court, the duo is magic, sensing each other’s moves before they happen and carrying their team to repeated victories. But off the court, there is something more between them. A feeling they refuse to name that keeps them glued to each other, for better or worse. It helps that they can barely see anything through the haze of drugs and alcohol they keep in constant supply. Mak claims it’s the only time she feels right with herself off the basketball court, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say weed made me happy to be alive, but it made me happy despite being alive,” and it’s not like anybody is going to tell her no, she’s a star.

Mak’s intensity, queerness, and perfectionism are the bread and butter of this novel. Although the word “lesbian” is not mentioned, the actions of Mak speak louder than her words, a common theme of this book. Her sexuality and chemistry with Liv are the focal points, intertwining in a homoerotic friendship many know too well. Despite Liv’s cishet “roman god” boyfriend, she maintains an intimacy and “will they won’t they” back and forth with Mak throughout the novel. But Mak is also in a constant fight with herself and her desires. She desires to be a D1 basketball star, and it devours her. She desires to be with Liv, and it devours her. She desires to escape her reality, and it devours her. Mak sums this up perfectly: “How was I expected to explain to this stranger that the more I desired, the more those desires emptied me? That if I could be anyone else, I would.” This is soul-crushing, but in a way that is so excruciatingly relatable to anyone who has ever wanted something so bad you ruined yourself to get it.

Which is what this book does so excellently, it reopens the nostalgia wound, releasing waves of emotional devastation in a way that makes you want to read it over and over again. The setting of the early 2000s is what cements that feeling. Not having social media or an iPhone gives a rawness to the story and forces the characters to experience life as it is happening. They IM and text as a means to an end, but it’s not the entirety of a relationship. They pick up drugs from a local dealer, they watch VHS tapes, and they share cell phones with their parents. It’s so earnest that the insincerity of modern technology would taint the perfectly crafted vibe.

Crane’s character writing and style are the true stars of this novel, though. Enabling the reader to feel they are experiencing the events as a teenager while reminiscing as an adult. Mak is a character everyone can see themselves in, but wishes they couldn’t. She is the embodiment of teenage angst. From not caring about what her body feels like in the future as long as she gets to use it now, to stuffing her face with drugs, to the homoerotic friendship all too many queer people have experienced. She doesn’t know anything about the world or adulthood, yet believes she has everything set and avoids realities that might affect that view. It hurts to read her screw herself over and over again and listen to how she thinks, “I didn’t necessarily care about attracting boys, but I did want to feel attractive to anyone who happened to be looking at me.” She manages to self-destruct and view herself as a god on the same page, and it wrecks the reader in the best way. The writing itself is the knife twist, too. Crane can shape scenes and thoughts that are unique but universally relatable. I wasn’t a D1 athlete in school, yet so much of Mak mirrors my life, and I’m sure the same is true with people who’ve read this. Crane weaves in precise social commentary while maintaining the coherence of the moment in a way unparalleled by any other author.

All in all, this maudlin character study is a must-read. From the unrequited love to the precocious coping mechanisms, you won’t be able to put this book down. Not to mention being unable to think about anything else for hours afterward. If you love crying while reading and the early 2000s, you are in the right place. Happy reading!

The writing was great, but I did not care for the story. I tried to read it physically and via audio but I couldn’t get into it. Also the time jumps were a little confusing. I got to a total of 25% read before i decided to officially put it down. I am willing to try something else for the author in the future!

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the ARC!

I went into this one blind - this book was sent to me by the publisher and I hadn't read the description. All you need to know is the writing is incredible and the way in which the story is told is captivating. I am thrilled to have been able to have read this one, and I can't wait to check out more from this author in the future.

Thank you again for the ARC!

I was hooked from the beginning!!
It was amazing and engaging.
I was instantly sucked in by the atmosphere and writing style.
The characters were all very well developed .
The writing is exceptional and I was hooked after the first sentence.

What a fantastic story of discovery, longing, and figuring out who you are as a queer person in a small town in the 2000s

Mack as our narrator is fantastic. She is trying to figure out her future in relationship to basketball and self identity after the loss of her father. She continues to struggle throughout the novel, as many queer people do, and the author did a fantastic job showcasing all of the struggles of a young adult. I wanted to keep rooting for her, but her story was almost 2 steps forward, 1 gigantic step back by her own self sabotage.

Liv as a new foil for Mack really kicked everything into high gear. She wasn’t one who was in a space to investigate her identity, and it was always heartbreaking to see from Mack’s eyes. However, a very realistic portrayal of discovery for many queer youth.

While typically a true romcom girlie, this was a poignant break from that, and I truly enjoy the writing style!

Thanks to The Dial Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

A Sharp Endless Need is a propulsive, character driven novel about basketball, desire, and sexuality set in early 2000s rural Pennsylvania.

“ We wanted to live forever. Who could blame us? We wanted to live ball in hand, ball against backboard, ball licking the bottom of the net. We wanted to be in history books. For what? We didn’t know. We certainly weren’t the first to do anything—not to ball, not to win, not to lose, not to suffer, but that didn’t matter. To us, basketball was a historical record of all the ways a body can move with and for another. What could be better than the strange and perverse pleasure of being known?”

At the center of this novel is Mack, a senior point guard being recruited at top colleges around the country. When her father dies, she meets Liv at the funeral. Liv is an equally good player at a rival school, and the two begin a complicated, intimate, and destructive friendship and basketball partnership laced with forbidden attraction. Over the course of their season, Mack and Liv wrestle with their college choices, their complicated relationships with their families, and the growing intimacy and desire between them.

This novel is beautifully written, with lots of gorgeous quotes that convey how intensely the characters feel about their sport and each other. I would highly recommend A Sharp Endless Need to fans of literary, character-driven novels, lovers of women’s sports, and queer folks.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can’t tell by the cover, but this is actually a YA coming of age sports romance. Basketball, specifically.

The writing is lyrical and the characters are flawed, there are family issues and these kids are trying to figure themselves out and they’re playing basketball and doing drugs and drinking and struggling with the big decisions and big feelings that come with growing up.

Overall, it’s a really lovely novel to listen to and a pretty quick read.

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

In A Sharp Endless Need, Crane paints a vivid coming-of-age story set within the intense world of early 2000s high school basketball. The narrative centers on Mack, a talented player with her sights set on D1 college sports, whose life takes a turbulent turn with the sudden loss of her father and the arrival of her enigmatic new teammate, Liv.

Told through Mack's vulnerable first-person perspective, the novel masterfully portrays the turbulent inner world of a teenager wrestling with grief, the awakening of her sexuality, and the fundamental question of who she truly is. Mack's profound sense of displacement outside the basketball court underscores the sport's significance in her life.

Crane's prose is consistently lyrical and evocative, successfully conveying the emotional weight of Mack's experiences. I was particularly struck by her ability to capture the unique, almost untamed spirit of the early 2000s – that elusive feeling that's hard to define but instantly recognizable. Moreover, she beautifully articulates the universal teenage struggle of self-discovery and the often-confusing landscape of burgeoning desires.

My appreciation for the author's nuanced portrayal of adolescence, however, is tempered by my strong reaction to the book's conclusion. Furthermore, the seemingly ubiquitous drug and alcohol use among the characters felt exaggerated and, based on my own teenage experience during that era, potentially unrealistic.

Ultimately, while the ending and the depiction of substance use gave me pause, A Sharp Endless Need offers a compelling exploration of grief, identity, and the messy process of growing up, anchored by Crane's beautiful writing.

Thank you to The Dial Press for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a moody/angsty coming of age read. As a non-basketball player the love of the game was explored in a way that felt accessible for me. The pacing was slower than I like even though this was a short book it felt longer.

Thank you Netgalley & Random House Publishing Group - Random House | The Dial Press for the advanced reader copy.

“To us, basketball was a historical record of all the ways a body can move with and for another. What could be better than the strange and perverse pleasure of being known?”

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for the eARC! This book was released in the US on May 13, 2025.

I finished A Sharp Endless Need by Mac Crane with tears on my face and gravel in my chest. It’s a book that hurts and holds, like an ice bath for tender queer hearts: shocking, raw, strangely soothing. Crane gives us Mack—a fiercely competitive high school basketball player, a closeted queer teen, a grieving daughter navigating the electric tension of first love and the deep grief of all the things she can’t say aloud.

Set against the backdrop of early 2000s suburbia—complete with Sixers jerseys, Wet Seal, and Allen Iverson posters—Crane’s novel pulses with desire, despair, and the desperate hunger to be seen. Mack’s love for her best friend and teammate, Liv, is all sweat and eye contact, late-night phone calls, and bruised bodies sharing court space and grief. Their bond is both intoxicating and tenuous, as much about what’s withheld as what’s spoken. On the basketball court, they’re poetry in motion; off it, they’re a car crash in slow motion.

Crane’s prose is lush, physical, and deeply interior—Mack’s voice aches with need, shame, and sharp self-awareness. This is not a tidy coming-out story. It’s a gutting portrayal of how queerness can be both a revelation and a risk, especially in environments saturated with repression, silence, and toxic masculinity. There are moments where Mack thinks queerness can’t ruin her life if she just never names it. God, am I familiar with that thought.

This book is for the girls with calloused hands and guarded hearts. The ones who fell in love with their best friends in locker rooms and car rides, who measured their desire in eye contact and shared playlists. For the sapphics who didn’t get an easy first time, or who loved someone who couldn’t love them back out loud.

And it’s for the ones who lost parents too young and had to rebuild a future with grief in their backpack. Mack’s relationship with her dad, flawed and tender, layered with masculine pride and unspeakable queerness, is one of the most nuanced depictions of loss I’ve read in a while.

A Sharp Endless Need isn’t easy. It tackles trauma, queer shame, corrective violence, and the devastation of untethered longing. But it’s also a radiant testament to survival, to reinvention, to queer kids who find meaning even after the game ends.

This novel felt like getting dunked in heartbreak and hauled back up by hope. If you like your queer stories devastating, tender, and absolutely unafraid to go there, this one will live in your chest for a long, long time. Thank you, Mac Crane, for all the gay yearning - it broke my heart once again.

📖 Read this if you love: raw, aching queer coming-of-age stories; intimate depictions of first love and grief; or books by Ocean Vuong.

🔑 Key Themes: Queer Longing and Shame, First Love and Friendship, Survival and Reinvention, Silence and Unspoken Desires.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Death of a Parent (severe), Alcohol (severe), Abandonment (minor), Drug Use (severe), Alcoholism (moderate), Homophobia (severe), Sexual Content (moderate), Sexual Assault (moderate), Suicide (minor), Grief (minor), Injury / Injury Detail (moderate), Medical Content (minor).

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the eARC.

This book..... this book. I know nothing about basketball, but I do know something about a good book. And this one is just that. The love is tragic and all consuming, it is smothering as the girls are also smothered in their small town(s). Brilliant.