Hi, book-lovers!
Today I'm so excited to be sharing with you a book that will definitely make it to my Top 20 books of the year.
A queer sports romance that will steal your hearts and make you feel like you're being hugged. I think the offical synopsis summarizes the trope quite well.
Synopsis
An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.
The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.
Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.
Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.
My Review
This book is about uncomfortable emotions and a quarter-life crisis.
(That has to be the best way to describe it).
Cat Sebastian has never failed me; this book did not change that. The cherry on top is that this book was even better than her previous ones, hitting right at the heart, maybe because it’s set in a timeline a little closer to the present day than her historical, Edwardian-era romance books.
The chemistry between Mark and Eddie is bursting with attraction, angst and fondness. Their characters are the kind of opposites that fit together to make a beautiful whole.
Eddy is messy, reckless in his youth, and desperately in love with baseball- and Mark. As the story takes off, he seems to be failing at both. He's currently in one of the worst slumps of his career, and struggling to find a good equation with his new teammates. On the other hand, his years have made Mark a bit pessimistic and protective of his peace. He's neat, shops exclusively from Bloomingdale's and is finally reaching his usual level of put-together a year after his partner passed away.
Through the characters of Eddie and Mark, the author talks about the feeling of loneliness, dealing with failure, major life changes and coming to terms with the fact that inevitably your sexuality is tied into your identity and politics.
It comes as a love letter to all the young people uncertain about their decisions and the messes they’re making, and the older adults who’ve made their mistakes and are tired, with hard-fought contentment and wisdom. If you'ever felt isolated in those experiences, this book will make you feel a little less alone.
“Now he knows who he is exactly and what he wants, and he knows exactly how high a price he’s willing to pay for those things. He’s tired and he’s angry, and his contentment is something heavy and sharp, a prize that he fought for. He wouldn't exchange it for anything“.
It’s about grief- not just the grief over losing a person you loved, but grieving the version of yourself that you lost along with them. It is very literally about pain that pierces through you in those subtle moments where you reach out to get two mugs of tea out of habit when now you only need one.
“You can cook." Eddie feels like he's uncovered a deep, dark secret.
"I can't be bothered to cook for one."
With that one sentence, Eddie can see years of dinners cooked and shared, and then all of it taken away. He already knows that Mark must have grieved—must have been grieving, the whole time they've known each other—but this might be the first time Mark's let him know it. He's pretty sure Mark will crumble into dust if Eddie tries to say something kind, so Eddie just brushes Mark's shoulder with his own. "Do you have an apron?" he asks. ”
Despite the heavy themes it tackles, at its heart, it is comforting and the author’s words carry an affectionate warmth between them. Sprinkled with moments of heartwarming friendship, banter and occasional baseball analogies, You Should Be So Lucky is a must-read that you won’t leave unaffected.
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