Play Along
Liz Tomforde, 2025
A doctor who has spent her life meeting other people's expectations and a ballplayer who won't let her vanish into them — a slow-burn sports romance about choosing your own life. A warm, witty slow burn with a lot of longing, where two people notice each other and keep choosing to stay.
Feels like longing and wonder. About love and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy contemporary sports romance with witty banter and two people working out what they want from each other. The slow-burn pace means the romantic tension builds gradually, so you may need patience if you prefer quicker sparks.
Why read it
It offers a warm, character-driven romance about refusing to shrink yourself for other people, with plenty of longing and wit along the way.
A page from the book
To be the one always understood, and never the one doing the understanding.
I never had to beg for your attention, and I’m not sure you’ll ever fully understand how safe that became for me, knowing you were giving it to me willingly. I never had to ask you to see me, to understand me, and I’m sorry that I haven’t allowed you to be able to say the same. But I promise you, Isaiah, now that my eyes have been opened, I can’t keep them off you. Liz Tomforde.Tomforde began as a self-published romance writer; her Windy City sports romances found their readers by word of mouth online before print editions followed.
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A second-chance sports romance about the song you keep replaying and the first love who never quite stayed in the past.
Mile High
Liz Tomforde, 2022
A flight attendant who doesn't do relationships and a grumpy hockey player who hates flying—stuck together on every charter flight.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Play Along for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy contemporary sports romance with witty banter and two people working out what they want from each other. The slow-burn pace means the romantic tension builds gradually, so you may need patience if you prefer quicker sparks.
- What is Play Along like?
- A warm, witty slow burn with a lot of longing, where two people notice each other and keep choosing to stay. Feels like longing and wonder. About love and society.
- What should I read after Play Along?
- If you liked Play Along, try The Wall of Winnipeg and Me (Mariana Zapata), One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston) and Love, Theoretically (Ali Hazelwood).
A taste of the feed
The person who can talk you down without ever looking up.
What if everyone hates me and no one talks to me? What if someone throws something at me?” Aiden snorted, setting the shirt he’d been holding aside and picking up the next one on the pile. “What are they going to throw? Bookmarks?
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me · Mariana Zapata
The nights you swear you'll never forget, and how quietly they go.
Nobody tells you how those nights that stand out in your memory—levee sunset nights, hurricane nights, first kiss nights, homesick sleepover nights, nights when you stood at your bedroom window and looked at the lilies one porch over and thought they would stand out, singular and crystallized, in your memory forever—they aren’t really anything. They’re everything, and they’re nothing. They make you who you are, and they happen at the same time a twenty-three-year-old a million miles away is warming up some leftovers, turning in early, switching off the lamp. They’re so easy to lose.
One Last Stop · Casey McQuiston
How a doctorate turns into a side hustle you never put on the CV.
Not that there would be anything wrong: sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers. But ten months ago, when I graduated with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Northeastern, I figured that by now I’d have a reasonably remunerated academic position. I did not imagine that at twenty-seven I’d be paying my water bill by helping adult men pretend that they have dating lives. And yet here I am, fake-girlfriending my way through my student loans.
Love, Theoretically · Ali Hazelwood
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