#Meryl Wilsner

[lgbtqreads]

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month 2025!

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month! We’re celebrating as we do with books starring Jewish protagonists, and for more recs, check out previous years’ posts! Children’s Just Like Queen Esther by Ari Moffic and Kerry Olitzky (text) and Rena Yehuda Newman (illustration) Atara loves to wear her crown – to the library, to the dentist, even to her swim lessons. It gives her confidence, and shows the…

[betterthanthemovies]

sapphic romance haul!!! 🥰

[transbookoftheday]

My Best Friend's Honeymoon by Meryl Wilsner

Meryl Wilsner's spicy f/nb romance, where two lifelong best friends go on a nonrefundable honeymoon together and discover sometimes to find a happily ever after, you just have to ask.

Elsie Hoffman has been engaged to her college boyfriend for a year and a half. Ginny Holtz has been in love with Elsie for almost a decade and a half.

When Elsie discovers her fiancé already planned their wedding and honeymoon as a surprise and she’s expected to be in a white dress in seven days, she swiftly realizes she’s let herself become too comfortable with a future she never wanted. She breaks things off, and a week later is on a plane to the Caribbean for her non-refundable honeymoon with her best friend Ginny instead.

Ginny thinks it’s high time Elise learned how to speak up for herself. So, they make a deal with her. For the next week, Elsie can have whatever she wants, wherever, however, and whenever she wants it, as long as she asks. They never expected Elsie to want them.

What starts as choosing activities and taking selfies soon turns to toe-curling kisses and much, much more. But what happens when the honeymoon is over?

Meryl Wilsner’s My Best Friend’s Honeymoon is about not only learning to ask for what you want, but for the happiness you deserve.

[notlayingroses]

honestly the one of the things that makes me the most sad about this hockey romance / booktok drama is that now so many hockey fans have a negative impression of hockey romances and sports romances. There are so, so many wonderful, queer romances out there that are doing wonderful, nuanced, and intentional things within the sports romance genre, and I hate that now people are looking down on them.

Here's some reasons that I love sports romances:

It’s a celebrity romance, but more of a niche celebrity romance. This isn’t a Hollywood super star that everyone in the world knows their name, BUT they often do have a dedicated fan base and are still in the public eye. It brings up really interesting discussions of fame and power and how much of yourself you keep private. So you get a lot of the good celebrity romance tropes and settings (like secret relationship, having to do interviews, traveling to new cities) but on a more niche and interesting scale

And bouncing off of that, with queer sports romances you get a lot of really interesting discussions of coming out, how you present your queerness to the world, how much of yourself is “owed” to the people around you vs yourself, which is very interesting when explored through a sports culture lense and I really enjoy the discussions of queer identity, culture, and community that come out of it. And particularly if it a romance between two players, there's a lot of really interesting queer nuances to explore

There are so many different pairings that can happen, but most of them kind of boil down to player/player, player/sports professional, player/normie, and each of these dynamics are interesting to me every time, especially when exploring teammate dynamics! And exploring how fame affects each of these things!

Found family! Your team is your family! And everyone has silly nicknames and rituals with each other and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy

With every romance, you pretty much know that it’s gonna end with a Happily Ever After, which is why we love the genre. But sometimes that can take the “surprise” out of a romance and its structure. Within sports romances, you don’t know how the game is going to go! They could win! They could lose! That affects the characters either way! And there’s been several sports romances that had me on the edge of my seat cause I genuinely had no idea which way the championship game was gonna go! I like that extra plot element to keep things interesting 

I also like it when you can tell the author is a big fan of their sport, and even if EYE don’t know anything about the sport, they’re generally good at writing things in a makes sense and makes the action interesting and keeps me hooked. It’s also just nice to step into the world the author loves!

Genuinely I just think that queer sports romances are doing so many interesting things, and have such interesting niches and nuances to the stories they’re telling! And they should not be looked down upon by hockey fans OR romance fans who have witnessed this booktok drama go down and now don’t want to touch hockey romances with a ten foot pole.

Here are some of the queer sports romances I recommend for anyone who wants to get into the genre:

[multifandominfj]

A movie adaptation of ⬇️THIS⬇️

✨STARRING✨

Tell me I’m wrong

Not only would they match each other’s freak, but their combined charisma would break the Richter scale, causing women everywhere to question their sexuality. 👀👏🏻

[the-forest-library]

Spent a lovely evening hearing Casey McQuiston and Meryl Wilsner discuss sluts (affectionate), sweaty travel (derogatory), and being yourself (affectionate).

[just-a-girl-who-likes-sharks]

“Lesbian is important to me. The world likes to act like it’s a porn category, not an identity. It took me a while to realize it wasn’t. I want other girls like me to know it’s a beautiful word.”

Phoebe Matthews in “Cleat Cute” by Meryl Wilsner

[wlwbookshelf]

CLEAT CUTE - MERYL WILSNER Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lesbians and soccer, a pairing as old as time. A cute read in a world cup year. This book has Meryl’s trademark spice (so a lot of it, and it’s good), plus lovable main characters Phoebe and Grace are so compelling that I rushed through the book in a day. 

Many thanks to St Martin’s Press for an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. 

[gothgleek]

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner

Oh my God, you fucked Parker’s mom and now you’re hung up on her. This is hilarious.

Books I’m Reading in 2024

[traeumenvonbuechern]

⚾ Books To Read If You Love "A League of Their Own" ⚾

I can’t believe Amazon canceled "A League of Their Own" 😭 Here are some books you should read if you miss this show as much as I do.

(Also, please remember that ALOTO wasn't canceled "due to the strikes". Amazon is the one to blame here, not WGA & SAG-AFTRA!)

Book titles:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

You Don't Have a Shot by Racquel Marie

Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner (comes out September 19, 2023)

Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frasier, Val Wise and Oscar O. Jupiter

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler

Joy, to the World by Kai Shappley and Lisa Bunker

The Avant-Guards by Carly Usdin and Noah Hayes

Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin

The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons

Running With Lions by Julian Winters

[lgbtqreads]

New Releases: April 2025

Unboxing Libby by Steph Cherrywell (1st) AI meets American Girl Dolls in this quirky novel about a group of preteen androids who have been cast aside and have to make their own way in the world. Max isn’t always sweet and bubbly. That wouldn’t be an issue except for the fact that she’s programmed to be. “Max” isn’t even her real name. She’s a Libby– one of the most popular A.I.Cademy Girl social…

[wearethekat]

May Book Reviews: My Best Friend's Honeymoon by Meryl Wilsner

Picked up this f/nb sapphic romance because I've read other books by Wilsner in the past. In My Best Friend's Honeymoon, Ginny has been pining after their best friend for years. When Elsie abruptly breaks up with her fiance after he tries to throw a surprise wedding, Ginny and Elsie dangerously decide to take the already booked honeymoon together...

This was a fluffy romance about two people in their early twenties realizing what they want in life--from each other, to a new job, to being recognized by family. The lovely beaches and perfect holiday weather of the setting added a touch of wish fulfillment, although being set mainly in the Caribbean had relatively little influence on the plot aside from being pretty scenery. I did find that the plot moved very abruptly from Ginny having a suppressed crush to Ginny and Elsie having sex. Fans of pining, beware--there isn't much here, in favor of wedging in a couple more sex scenes instead.

A sweet and competently executed sapphic romance, if slightly more heavy to bad communication than I prefer

[starrynight0612]

*squeals* I love these two 🥰

[what-to-read]

June TBR:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins

Sunrise on the Reaping -Suzanne Collins

Something to Talk About - Meryl Wilsner

You Again - Kate Goldbeck

I decided to round out the month with two lighter mood books since all of May and the first half of June's books are Hunger Games and heavy. Let me know if you've read any of them! What did you think?

[kai-in-the-korner]

does any one have some good queer sports romance books to recommend 🙏🏼

i only have two (the prospects by kt hoffman and cleat cute by meryl wilsner) and I desperately need more🙏🏼

if anyone has some good recommendations plz tell me 😭🙏🏼

[chichichi-blue-blog]

Hey sapphics! I wanted to ask what you all think about Meryl Wilsner’s books? I’m thinking of buying one, but I’d love to know if you think they’re worth it and which of their books left the biggest impression on you? Thanks so much!