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A review by prfctlymismtchd
Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner
5.0
Thank you to Meryl Wilsner, St Martin's Press/St Martin's Griffin, and NetGalley for the ARC for this book.
Small town, Pheobe Matthews can't believe it. She was an early draft to play for the New Orleans Krewes and has been called up to train with the Women's World Cup Soccer team with her childhood idol Grace Henderson. Grace a soccer prodigy, is introverted, serious, quiet, and slow to trust newcomers. Pheobe is the loud and proud, high-energy, class clown who flirts with all the cute girls. While she's the polar opposite of Pheobe new-kid joy and love for the game reminds Grace of what playing soccer used to be like for her when she started her career 10 years earlier. At first, Phoebe is star-struck by Grace but soon she finds that Grace is everything she wants to be as a player and be with as a partner. But how does she convince Grace (who isn't out to the public) that she not only isn't vying for her spot on the National Team but that she sees Grace as more than just a rockstar soccer player?
Pheobe Matthews is one of the best embodiments of a dynamic woman with ADHD I've read in a very long time. The way she is written is textbook and yet quippy and fun. It isn't until the end of the book that she is diagnosed as an adult but if I could show you my copy you'd see almost every page is marked by moments of impulsivity, overthinking, oversharing, time blindness, and more. Her communication style is somewhere between awkward oversharing and timid is incredibly poignant. Grace is clearly coded as Autistic and the end of the book implies that she too will consider looking for seeking a diagnosis. But Grace's lack of understanding of social cues combined with Phoebe's class clown self-defense mechanism leads to an interesting combination of misunderstandings in which two people so much on the same page actually end up being almost lost in translation.
This is a beautiful neurodivergent, sapphic, and sporty romance that hit on a lot of the stigmas that surround the queer and neurodivergent without being preachy about them or making light of them.
I'd give this book 4.5/5 stars and round up to 5. The reason for this is the narrator's voice was slightly off from what I prefer/am used to and at times I found this pulled me from the story. But it didn't detract from the overall awesomeness of the book.
Small town, Pheobe Matthews can't believe it. She was an early draft to play for the New Orleans Krewes and has been called up to train with the Women's World Cup Soccer team with her childhood idol Grace Henderson. Grace a soccer prodigy, is introverted, serious, quiet, and slow to trust newcomers. Pheobe is the loud and proud, high-energy, class clown who flirts with all the cute girls. While she's the polar opposite of Pheobe new-kid joy and love for the game reminds Grace of what playing soccer used to be like for her when she started her career 10 years earlier. At first, Phoebe is star-struck by Grace but soon she finds that Grace is everything she wants to be as a player and be with as a partner. But how does she convince Grace (who isn't out to the public) that she not only isn't vying for her spot on the National Team but that she sees Grace as more than just a rockstar soccer player?
Pheobe Matthews is one of the best embodiments of a dynamic woman with ADHD I've read in a very long time. The way she is written is textbook and yet quippy and fun. It isn't until the end of the book that she is diagnosed as an adult but if I could show you my copy you'd see almost every page is marked by moments of impulsivity, overthinking, oversharing, time blindness, and more. Her communication style is somewhere between awkward oversharing and timid is incredibly poignant. Grace is clearly coded as Autistic and the end of the book implies that she too will consider looking for seeking a diagnosis. But Grace's lack of understanding of social cues combined with Phoebe's class clown self-defense mechanism leads to an interesting combination of misunderstandings in which two people so much on the same page actually end up being almost lost in translation.
This is a beautiful neurodivergent, sapphic, and sporty romance that hit on a lot of the stigmas that surround the queer and neurodivergent without being preachy about them or making light of them.
I'd give this book 4.5/5 stars and round up to 5. The reason for this is the narrator's voice was slightly off from what I prefer/am used to and at times I found this pulled me from the story. But it didn't detract from the overall awesomeness of the book.