Tag Archives: Rachel Spangler

Fave Five: Sapphic Tennis Romances

Backhanded Compliments by Katie Chandler

Love All by Rachel Spangler

Break Point and Lucky Loser by Yolanda Wallace

Slammed by Lola Keeley

In Her Court by Tamsen Parker

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2025!

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! In celebration, here are a whole bunch of books that center queer girls and women in sports! (For even more recs, check out these past posts!)

Middle Grade

It’s All or Nothing, Vale by Andrea Beatriz Arango

All these months of staring at the wall?
All these months of feeling weak?
It’s ending—
I’m going back to fencing.
And then it’ll be
like nothing ever happened.

No one knows hard work and dedication like Valentina Camacho. And Vale’s thing is fencing. She’s the top athlete at her fencing gym. Or she was . . . until the accident.

After months away, Vale is finally cleared to fence again, but it’s much harder than before. Her body doesn’t move the way it used to, and worst of all is the new number one: Myrka. When she sweeps Vale aside with her perfect form and easy smile, Vale just can’t accept that. But the harder Vale fights to catch up, the more she realizes her injury isn’t the only thing holding her back. If she can’t leave her accident in the past, then what does she have to look forward to?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Continue reading Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2025!

Fave Five: Olympic Reads

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters

Make it Count: My Fight to Become the First Transgender Olympic Runner by CeCé Telfer 

Out of Our League ed. by Dahlia Adler and Jennifer Iacopelli

Edge of Glory by Rachel Spangler

Gold by E.J. Noyes

Fave Five: Softball/Baseball Romances

Playing for Keeps by Jennifer Dugan (f/f YA)

The Prospects by KT Hoffman (m/m)

Unwritten Rules by KD Casey (m/m series)

Heart of the Game by Rachel Spangler (f/f)

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian (m/m Histrom)

Bonus: These are all prose novels, but for a graphic novel series, check out Grand Slam Romance by Ollie Hicks and Emma Oosterhouse (f/f))

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2024!

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! In celebration of this day, here are a whole bunch of books that center queer girls and women in sports! (For even more recs, check out 2022‘s post!)

Fiction

You Don’t Have a Shot by Racquel Marie

Valentina “Vale” Castillo-Green’s life revolves around soccer. Her friends, her future, and her father’s intense expectations are all wrapped up in the beautiful game. But after she incites a fight during playoffs with her long-time rival, Leticia Ortiz, everything she’s been working toward seems to disappear.

Embarrassed and desperate to be anywhere but home, Vale escapes to her beloved childhood soccer camp for a summer of relaxation and redemption…only to find out that she and the endlessly aggravating Leticia will be co-captaining a team that could play in front of college scouts. But the competition might be stiffer than expected, so unless they can get their rookie team’s act together, this second chance―and any hope of playing college soccer―will slip through Vale’s fingers. When the growing pressure, friendship friction, and her overbearing father push Vale to turn to Leticia for help, what starts off as a shaky alliance of necessity begins to blossom into something more through a shared love of soccer…and maybe each other.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | IndieBound

Continue reading Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2024!

Happy Indie Bookstore Day!

Here at LGBTQReads the sole non-donation income that keeps the site running does come from a certain website’s affiliate links, but don’t let that fool you into thinking we don’t love indies, especially the ones that carry small-press/self-pub queer books! To celebrate those very stores, here are a bunch of links to celebrate indie bookstore day the best way possible and get some amazing books in the process!

This will be an annual feature, so if a bookstore you love isn’t on this year’s list, it may be on next year’s! I obviously couldn’t feature every store or every book, but if this post sells a few books and even helps people find some signed copies of their faves, I feel good about it!

Note: I did not list a book as signed if the *listing* for the book did not say it, but many of these books were pulled from “Signed Books” lists on the sites. If you want a signed copy, double check!

Shop at…

Anderson’s Bookshop (Naperville, IL)

YA

Book Culture (NYC Area)

Adult

The Brain Lair (South Bend, IN)

PB

MG/YA

Adult

Non-Fiction

Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX)

YA

Adult

Gay’s the Word

Books of Wonder (NYC, NY)

PB

MG

YA

McNally Jackson (NYC, NY)

Adult

Little Shop of Stories (Decatur, GA)

YA

Fountain Bookstore (Richmond, VA)

PB

MG

YA

Adult

Joseph-Beth Booksellers (OH/KY)

YA

NA/Adult

Malaprop’s (Asheville, NC)

YA

Murder by the Book (Houston, TX)

Adult

Myst Galaxy Books (San Diego, CA)

YA

Adult

Northshire Bookstore (NY/VT)

YA

Adult

Oblong Books (Rhinebeck, NY)

MG

YA

Adult

One More Page Books (Alexandria, VA)

YA

Park Road Books (Charlotte, NC)

YA

Adult

Poetry

Parnassus (Nashville, TN)

MG/YA

Adult

Powell’s (Portland, OR)

MG/YA

NA/Adult

Quail Ridge Books (Raleigh, NC)

YA

The Ripped Bodice (LA, CA)

PB

YA

NA/Adult

The Strand (NYC, NY)

YA

Adult

Third Place Books (Seattle, WA)

PB

MG

YA

Adult

Nonfiction

Poetry

Trident Booksellers and Cafe (Boston, MA)

YA

Adult

Writer’s Block Bookstore (Winter Park, FL)

YA

Adult