If Heated Rivalry left you wanting more stories about elite athletes whose private lives are considerably messier than their game-day personas, you’ve come to the right place. Rachel Reid’s romance between rival stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov found an even wider audience through its television adaptation, sending plenty of new readers looking for their next MM sports romance.
Fortunately, the genre has range beyond a single sport or romance trope. The books below trade the rink for tennis courts, minor-league ballparks, football stadiums, Formula racing circuits and Premier League pitches. There are rivals who would rather beat each other than admit they’re attracted, teammates learning to trust each other, a couple forced to reckon with a terrifying accident and one quarterback whose glamorous life hides something far darker.
Thirty Love by Tom Vellner
Tennis
Leo Chambers has one big goal before he turns 30: win the U.S. Open. Unfortunately, Gabe Montoya keeps getting in the way.
Gabe is Leo’s longtime tour nemesis, the player he can’t reliably beat and, increasingly, the man he can’t stop thinking about. Their public feud eventually gives way to a truce, attraction and a secret relationship, all while both men are still trying to win the same tournaments.
Tom Vellner has plenty of fun with the absurdity of falling for the person you’re supposed to defeat. Tennis makes that tension especially sharp: there’s no team to disappear into when Leo and Gabe meet across the net. One wins. One loses.
The sport gets real attention here, too. Reviewers have praised the match scenes for their energy and suspense, and the book’s publisher pitches the book directly to fans of Rachel Reid and Heated Rivalry. For readers hoping to scratch that rivals-to-lovers itch, this is the obvious place to start.
The Prospects by KT Hoffman
Baseball
Gene Ionescu is an optimist by nature, which helps when you’re playing minor-league baseball and waiting for a shot at the majors that may never come.
He’s also openly gay and the first openly trans player in professional baseball, and deeply attached to his team, the Beaverton Beavers. Then Luis Estrada arrives. Luis is a former teammate, current rival and exactly the sort of complication Gene does not need.
They don’t immediately become baseball’s dream duo. Old resentment gets in the way, as do different temperaments and competing ambitions. But once Gene and Luis begin finding their rhythm on the field, their relationship starts shifting with it.
There’s a buoyancy to KT Hoffman’s The Prospects even when Gene isn’t sure where baseball will take him. The novel explores ambition without treating happiness as something that has to wait until the big leagues come calling. Publishers Weekly, which named it one of its best romances of 2024, praised both the baseball action and the slow development of Gene and Luis’s relationship. Even readers who don’t know a sacrifice fly from a foul ball can understand why these two are worth rooting for.
Hard Count by Lucas Malone
Football
Piper Ashton likes everything where he can see it: the defense, the coverage, the next play. Noah Reyes is the opposite kind of quarterback, improvisational, loose and irritatingly confident.
Naturally, the media loves pitting them against each other.
Then an underwear brand decides the rivalry would look even better with both men mostly naked, standing inches apart under studio lights. That goes about as smoothly as you’d expect.
The setup has the makings of an outrageous football rivals-to-lovers romance, and Lucas Malone happily delivers plenty of excess. But Hard Count has much darker business underneath the glossy surface. Piper’s career is entangled with billionaire Jayson Days, whose influence over him has long since crossed from professional management into financial, psychological and sexual coercion. Noah, on the other hand, is one of the few people in Piper’s life who wants something from him without trying to own him.
Malone describes the book as a “gay football sex opera,” and that gives you a fair idea of its appetite. It’s explicit, satirical and deliberately over-the-top, but the darkness around Piper is real. Readers looking for the wildest book on this list will find it here.
Crash Test by Amy James
Formula Racing
When Formula 2 driver Jacob Nichols is critically injured in a catastrophic crash, Travis Keeping has to react like a fellow driver.
He can’t react like Jacob’s boyfriend, because almost nobody knows that’s what he is.
They’ve been secretly together for nearly a year. Meanwhile, Travis is 24 and still fighting for the Formula 1 championship while Jacob faces a difficult recovery, forcing both men to reconsider what comes next.
Amy James starts Crash Test where another sports romance might put its climax. The wreck comes early; the consequences are the story. That leaves room for Jacob and Travis to figure out what racing means to them separately, what secrecy has cost them and whether their relationship can survive once the adrenaline is gone.
The danger of motorsport gives all of this an edge that would be hard to reproduce in another setting. Injury is always possible in professional sports. Here, it can arrive at 180 miles per hour.
Two Left Feet by Kallie Emblidge
Soccer
Getting injured is bad enough. Being told to mentor the younger player who might replace you is worse.
That’s the situation facing Oliver Harris, star midfielder for London’s Camden Roses, when Spanish newcomer Leonardo Davies-Villanueva arrives while Oliver is sidelined. Oliver sees Leo as a threat at first. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, getting to know him makes that position harder to maintain.
Leo is talented, ambitious and not nearly as easy to dislike as Oliver would prefer. Mentorship becomes friendship, and friendship begins edging toward something Oliver has even more reason to keep quiet. He has spent years keeping his sexuality out of public view, and falling for a teammate isn’t exactly a low-risk way to change that.
Kallie Emblidge lets their relationship build alongside Oliver’s return to the pitch, so the professional tension never disappears just because attraction shows up. Leo may have entered Oliver’s life as the guy threatening his spot in the lineup. The more interesting question becomes whether Oliver can stop treating everything — football, love and his own future — as something he has to defend.
