This Sapphic Soccer Romance Is Everything We Wanted from ‘Bend It Like Beckham’

If, like me, you still mourn the fact that Bend It Like Beckham isn’t explicitly queer, don’t fret: Meryl Wilsner’s new novel, Cleat Cute, is brimming with sapphic romance and soccer.

Phoebe Matthews has just graduated college and has already been drafted to play soccer professionally when she gets a call from the U.S. Women’s National Team inviting her to the first training camp of the year. There, she meets Grace Henderson, her longtime idol, and makes a bet: Phoebe will outlast Grace in a grueling speed and endurance test, and if she wins, she gets a kiss (not her suggestion, but a meddling teammate’s).

What ensues is a whirlwind friends-with-benefits situationship that pushes both women out of their comfort zones and demands they not only take accountability for their mistakes, but ask for what they want and pursue their desires relentlessly.

Cleat Cute is a fun, breezy read that also attempts to tackle some serious subjects. Phoebe is a larger-than-life class clown who flirts with everyone and doesn’t realize she has undiagnosed ADHD. Grace is a much more reserved, private person whose professional soccer career began when she was a teen, stripping her of most “normal” experiences and launching her to stardom before she could drive. She also has undiagnosed Autism, which informs the majority of her interactions. Together, Phoebe and Grace are incapable of keeping their hands off of each other and terrible at communicating, which leads to more than one awkward period between the pair.

Wilsner relies heavily on rom-com tropes, interspersed with hyper-specific professional soccer details that flesh out the world of Cleat Cute beautifully. From the jump, Phoebe and Grace have to navigate their feelings for each other and their desire to compete at the highest level. Grace is benched early in the book for a long-term injury she’s chosen not to report until someone else does it for her, and Phoebe is tapped to take her place in their New Orleans team lineup. It’s a World Cup year and they are both vying for spots on the National team so they can play—which is complicated by bad coaching decisions and Grace’s refusal to challenge authority figures even when she knows she’s right.

Phoebe and Grace are surrounded by vibrant, interesting characters including close family, like Phoebe’s younger brother and Grace’s dad, as well as their teammates—who run the gamut from “token straight” to married lesbians with a kid. Scenes involving their friends, teammates, and family feel very real and offer a lot of character insight. It’s lovely to see so many women bonded together through a common love, navigating their lives and helping each other in palpable ways.

But when it’s just Phoebe and Grace, Wilsner’s writing shines. They ratchet up the tension between these two fast, and when they give into how much they want each other, the sex scenes are intense and hot. Phoebe is a talker and Grace isn’t used to giving up control, and these dynamics are thoroughly explored—especially in the bedroom. Wilsner writes intimacy with the same attention to detail as they write about soccer, and the pacing never lags even in sex scenes that traverse chapters so we get both points of view.

Throughout Cleat Cute, Wilsner alternates between Phoebe’s point of view and Grace’s, which in this case provides necessary insight as the two women struggle to get on the same page. Rather than reliving moments from each point of view, Wilsner seamlessly transitions from one to the next so scenes flow. Their pacing is to be admired, as is their ability to so clearly distinguish Phoebe’s voice from Grace’s.

Aside from a somewhat haphazard introduction to Phoebe having ADHD and Grace believing she may have Autism, neither of which are given nearly enough time to breathe, Cleat Cute is a fun, sexy read about two women falling in love regardless of what stands in their way. It fits beautifully into the contemporary romance canon and deserves a spot on the shelf, especially if you’re looking for adult, sapphic love stories.

Cleat Cute is currently available everywhere books are sold.

(featured image: St. Martin’s Griffin / The Mary Sue)