5 perfect sports romance books to read during Romance Awareness Month

Romance Awareness Month is finally upon us, so it’s time to break out the rom-coms, the delicious pints of ice cream, and the books that make your heart flutter and go weak at the knees.

Every August, fans of romance come out to celebrate their favorite genre. It’s a category of films, literature, and music that is filled with falling in love at first sight, heartbreaks, happily ever afters, and so much more. There’s also a wide array of sub-genres, such as historical, paranormal, science fiction, and fantasy.

Sports romance is a favorite sub-genre of mine that deserves more love (pun intended) in the romance community, so here are five books worth checking out this month.

Running with Lions — Julian Winters

The World Cup may be over, but soccer still plays on in this friends-turned-enemies-turned-love-interests story by Julian Winters.

Sebastian Hughes is the kind of guy who wants everyone in his team to play their best game, so he offers to do what he initially believes to be an impossible task: help train the guy who sort of hates his guts. Things take a turn when Sebastian starts to develop feelings in the process, but the situation is not as one-sided as it seems.

Running With Lions is a must-have if you’re looking for that sweet kind of romance that makes you think anything and everything is possible when that right person comes along.

Crossing Hearts — Rebecca Crowley

Enter the world of professional soccer, where an international player and his interpreter take soccer romances to another level.

Rio Vidal is a Chilean soccer god and legend, and when he joins the Atlanta Skyline team in the United States, he runs into a major problem: He doesn’t know how to speak English. Eva Torres is the person for the job, but she finds it increasingly difficult to keep things professional. Try as she might, she can’t turn her attention and desires away, especially when Vidal only has eyes for her.

Crossing Hearts will make you think the heater is turned up way too high in your room. It’s not. It’s the steamy romance playing out in the book and you turning the pages faster and faster to find out what happens next.

Smart Tass — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Heading over to the college scene, this next novel is vaguely reminiscent of the ’90s film She’s All That, mainly because of a dare that ends up pulling two people together.

Hunter Johnson is the star quarterback all girls want, except for Tass. She’s your ordinary nerdy girl who wants nothing to do with him, but he constantly picks on her and makes her life miserable. She’s determined to ignore him and try out for the sorority she desperately wants to join, but a prank puts all of that in jeopardy. Tass has no choice but to play along in a game where she discovers several truths behind the dare.

Smart Tass is a witty, sassy, and hilarious modern romance that’ll make you want to go back and relive (or redo) some of your college days.

For Finlay — J. Nathan

This next football romance is also set in college, but it tugs on the heartstrings a tad more when the sister of a deceased football player starts working for the team he was meant to be on.

The work makes her feel like she’s closer to her brother, but it also angers her to see Caden Brook — Alabama’s star quarterback — taking up what should have been her brother’s position. The line between hate and love starts to blur the more she interacts with him, but things get even more complicated when misunderstandings crop up and jealousy takes root.

For Finlay is the kind of story that makes you want to dive into the pages and shake the characters because they’re perfect for each other and you want them to be together. That’s how invested you’ll get with the relationship. That, to me, is the sign of a good book.

For Crosby by J. Nathan

This last novel is for the hockey fans out there. This time, it follows Finlay’s roommate, Sabrina. And while it takes place in the same universe as the previous book, both novels can be read as stand-alones.

Sabrina is tired of being the person who motivates others to get the dream girl or guy. She’s determined to bring the focus back to herself, but along the way, she has the strangest encounter with the latest addition to the school’s hockey team: Crosby Parks. The two butt heads whenever they meet until they both realize that they mean more to each other than they originally thought. Sparks fly, but is it enough to keep them going when the ice threatens to break underneath them?

For Crosby, quite plain and simply, will give you all of the warm and happy feels. It’ll make you wish there were follow-up books about this couple alone just so that you can be reminded of what love truly looks like.

Whether you pop in your romance film, listen to that one heartbreaking song on loop, or pick up a heartfelt novel, how will you be celebrating Romance Awareness Month?