This book was rough for me. There were a lot of stereotypes that turned me off. They were addressed in the end as being shitty behavior, but the fact that they were used at all was annoying. Also, it was hard to root for the main character. The trauma of losing her mom made sense, as did the stress of the promise, but some of the choices she made after meeting Rosa were ridiculous. I liked the way it all wrapped together though.

really well done and cute romance with some awesome characters. 4 stars. tysm for the arc. woulc redommenc.

3 stars but I have a lot to stay!

Pros: I REALLY liked the back half of this book. Eve's dead-mom-trauma was really thought out in the second half of the book. Seth's competing trauma was also really interesting and I wish we could have explored that a little more in the first half of the book. The first half and the second half feel like two entirely different stories and I wish they were meshed a bit more. I feel like a lot of these things would still be bleeding into Eve's thoughts and life, even if she's forcing herself to ONLY focus on field hockey. Eve's feelings about her mom were so genuine and made for GREAT sentence-level craft.

The romance was sweet, perfect for teen audiences. I think a lot of the snap-decisions that Eve made were perfectly in line with being a teenager girl trying to figure yourself out. The drama was exactly the kind of high-school age drama that I expect two 17 year olds to get in— feeling older than they are because they're on the cusp of adulthood.

Cons:
Evenlyn is bisexual and Rosa identifies as queer. That leaves our single named lesbian character as Melanie— who, unfortunately, seemed to be there only to fulfill a mean-lesbian stereotype. The entire conversation about LUG and BUG (things I'm not even sure teenagers talk about anymore in 2024, as it had already gone out of style when I was in HS in 2010) and having Melanie push the idea of fake-gay/questioning bisexuality really soured my reading experience as a lesbian. "Mean and don't believe in bisexuality" is a lesbian stereotype in majority of queer media. And then Melanie didn't really have much more to do with the story, just kind of there as a device for Evelyn to have a sexuality crisis.

Overall:
Slightly soured by the named Lesbian character being relegated to a stereotype, but really enjoyed the majority of there rest of the book.

3.5 rounded up. If I’m honest Evelyn was a bit annoying. I know this was a coming out story and was about field hockey but she was so quick to just fall for obvious manipulation by her friends and then to forgive them. I wasn’t a fan of Katie or the fact they maintained a friendship after how shitty she was. You should accept treatment like that from a friend. She was also too into field hockey. Which I know is part of the point but… there are other things to life and the fact her sport feeds into her aspirations for college with no explanation of what she would do with a gender studies degree focused on sports.

I liked the first half of this a lot, but I did get a bit frustrated by the sports aspect of it. It didn't seem realistic that she could be a goalie for one of the top high school teams in the country but not have any colleges other than Duke (a strong athletic schools) recruiting her, and it didn't seem realistic that a team would have only one goalie. I would give this author's next YA book a shot though!

This was such a great romance novel and worked in the young adult element that I was looking for. The plot had that charm that I was looking for and enjoyed everything that was written. It had a realistic concept and enjoyed the sports element that I was looking for. I enjoyed the way Kit Rosewater wrote this and left me wanting more.