Book Review: Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner

book cover for Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner

Cleat Cute is a sapphic sports romance book that features two players on the same soccer team. Grace is a veteran soccer player while Phoebe is a rookie. They start off as reluctant friends (reluctant on Grace’s side), but that soon turns into something much more than friendship.

I think this is the first sapphic sports romance that I’ve read so I definitely liked that part of it! I grew up playing soccer year-round so having a book that included queer representation with soccer was really great! It was also set in New Orleans which was really fun to read about, having been there a few times myself!

While I enjoyed some aspects of this book, I also had issues with a few things. First of all, there is so much miscommunication between the two main characters. It was super frustrating throughout the entire book and honestly, it’s kind of surprising that they ended up together because they seemed on totally different pages half the time.

Another big issue I had with the book is how one of the main characters deals with someone’s mental health.

The first conversation between Phoebe and Grace about Phoebe having ADHD was poorly handled. Grace brings it casually up to Phoebe, just assuming that Phoebe already had a diagnosis. Phoebe has never mentioned to Grace about having ADHD so it was wrong of Grace to presume that in the first place.

But the real issue to me is the fact that Phoebe asked Grace to drop it and Grace completely ignores her and even goes on to set up a doctors appointment to get her a diagnosis. This just felt off to me. While I appreciate the mental health representation and like that ADHD rep was included, I did not like this aspect of it and thought it could have been handled differently.

Overall I did like the book, but there are just a few too many things I didn’t like that prevented me from really loving it.

I received this book from NetGalley as an ARC. All opinions are my own.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Rating: 3 stars

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