Sports romance novels give readers a reason to cheer
The growing sub-genre finds fans among a variety of sports, with hockey leading the way
Since Sarah Gardner Bergan opened her new bookstore in July, she’s mostly gotten unanimously positive reviews for it. But there was one complaint that took a 5-star review for Shelf Love DSM down a notch, one reader who wasn’t perfectly happy about something.
“It said there were too many sports books,” Gardner Bergan said of the two tall bookshelves dedicated to sports in her store near the Drake University campus in Des Moines.
Shelf Love DSM specializes in romance novels, creating a space where the oft-maligned genre creates community for its fans and offers a wide range of sub-genres for the stories that pretty much always have a happy ever after. Gardner Bergan doesn’t carry two shelves of sports romance to entertain herself, she carries that many because she’s running a business and those are the hot titles right now.
Romance novel readers are primarily female. And the popularity of sports romance is just another example of female and LGBTQ fans finding new, non-traditional paths to experience or share their love of sports.
“For a long time, romance itself as a genre has been very stigmatized,” said Esha Patel, a University of Iowa student who has written two Formula 1 racing romance novels and has a romance novel about lacrosse, “Cross My Heart,” coming out March 24. “And then you have women being fans of sports like hockey. There’s been a lot of stigmatization of women who enjoy sports like that, too, where people say they’re just there to watch the guys.
“So I feel like sports romance is like this fantastic way of bringing those things together.”
For Nicole Haase, a Milwaukee-based hockey writer and lifelong romance novel fan, part of the appeal is the world-building that sports romance books offer. A sports team provides a whole collection of characters whose stories can be told.
“You’re going to get a whole world with players on the same team each getting their own books and the other characters appearing in each other’s. There’s that found family comfort,” said Haase, who in high school used to tuck romance novels into her textbooks during class. “I know all these characters. I’m going to jump right in. So if you find an author you like, and you find characters you like you’re going to keep getting that over and over again, which is nice.”
Gardner Bergan’s store is building community for those who love the romance genre in general, and that fits in with those who love sports, too.
“For somebody who really enjoys sports, there can be so much misogyny in it,” Gardner Bergan said. “And I feel like romance has been a place for people to explore a love for sports and learn about those sports before going into those spaces that they might not feel as comfortable in.”
Sports teams are taking notice. On March 21, Shelf Love DSM will partner with the Iowa Wild for Hockey Romance Night. An event ticket includes a game ticket and a signing event. Among the seven authors there will be Samantha Lind, an Iowa writer who has written 24 sports romance novels about baseball and hockey. Three hundred people have already signed up for the event, said Gardner Bergan, who was an event planner before opening her store.
In January, a dance event celebrating the popular HBO gay hockey love story “Heated Rivalry,” had to be moved from Wooly’s to the much larger Val Air Ballroom, where about 1,000 people attended.
On March 13-15, the Sports Romance Convention will be in suburban Minneapolis. Gardner Bergan organized the event, which will have 57 authors on hand to sign books as well as panel discussions and trivia contests. Gardner Bergan expects around 600 people, including authors, vendors, panelists and attendees.
This week, Shelf Love DSM announced a Baseball Romance Night at an Iowa Cubs game on May 23.
Sports and romance aren’t a new concept, particularly for films. “Pat and Mike,” from 1952, starred Katharine Hepburn as a golf and tennis star and Spencer Tracy as a sports promoter (with a cameo by sports stars of the era, including the legendary Babe Didrikson Zaharias). Sparks flew with hockey and/or skating with “Ice Castles” (1978), “Champions: A Love Story” (1979) and “The Cutting Edge” (1992). “Bull Durham” (1988) made minor-league baseball seem incredibly sexy. “Love and Basketball” (2000) might be the best film ever made about the female athletic experience. In 2024, the tennis love triangle “Challengers” earned critical praise. Then in real life, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift seemingly leapt right out of a romance novel.
But with more women participating in and working in sports, as well as more mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ characters, there are potential romance novel plots that wouldn’t have been as marketable decades ago.
The boon in sports romance is led in part by hockey, so huge it’s a sub-sub-genre within the romance genre. The immense popularity of “Heated Rivalry” didn’t spark the hockey romance craze, it illustrated it.
“It’s almost like there’s sports romance and then there’s hockey romance,” Haase said. “Hockey romance at this point is almost its own huge genre.”
“Heated Rivalry” is part of a popular “Game Changers” series by Rachel Reid, with eight books since 2018 that have sold more than 650,000 as of the end of 2025. (“Heated Rivalry,” featuring enemies to lovers Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, is the series’ second book. The first is “Game Changer,” featuring hockey star Scott Hunter and juice bar barista Kip.)
It’s a curious frenzy, as hockey is solidly No. 4 on the list of popular men’s pro sports in the U.S.
“I think hockey is appealing because there is a sort of a controlled aggression to it,” Haase said. “There’s a hyper-masculinity to it, but generally the characters are then written as big softies off the ice.”
Haase said there was one concerning aspect of the trend – race. Basketball, a very Black sport, has far fewer books; even the lesbian/sapphic sports romance books are more heavy into soccer, she said
“The whole thing is very white,” she said of hockey in particular. “There’s just no doubting that. The readers are white, the characters are white, and the authors are white, and then it just all gets perpetuated, you know?”
It’s an issue that hasn’t gone unnoticed within the genre. A session at the Sports Romance Conference will be dedicated to diversity and representation in sports romance.
A lack of familiarity with hockey is part of the appeal for writers and readers, too, Haase said. Expertise is not required.
“People don’t know it as well, that made it easy for lots of authors to hop into it,” she said.
Hockey romance is a big seller at Shelf Love DSM, and its popularity intrigues Gardner Bergan, too.
“Hockey is not the most common sport for somebody to grow up with. For me, I didn’t grow up with my dad watching hockey. I don’t associate hockey with my dad,” she said. “And I think that’s also why rugby romances are really popular. Either people love a sport so much that they’re going to read that sport specifically, or it’s just something kind of new to them that makes it interesting.”
Patel was an athlete growing up and knew nothing about Formula 1 racing until she watched Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” with her dad. Immediately she thought it would be a great idea for a book.
“Not only do you have all the high stakes and the drama and traveling the world, but the good old boys club culture was really intriguing to me,” she said.
Formula 1 hasn’t had a woman on the circuit since 1992, and that got Patel’s creativity going. The result was “Offtrack,” the story of racing and romance between rookie Dayana Zahrani and superstar Miguel de la Fuente.
Formula 1 racing is an emerging popular sport in the romance genre. Goodreads lists 189 books under a “F1 romance” search, significant number but still paling in comparison to hockey (5,865).
Those sports and more will be part of the convention in Minnesota, in its second year. Fifty-seven authors are scheduled to appear, representing the wide swath of the genre within the genre.
“It’s hard for a lot of women to find spaces when it comes to enjoying sports and enjoying romance,” Gardner Bergan said. “So having both of those things together means a lot to a lot of people”
Later this month: A conversation with University of Iowa pre-med student and sports romance author Esha Patel.
A sports romance primer
Sarah Gardner Bergan, owner of Shelf Love DSM, offers these books as a launching point into sports romance. Synopses are from Amazon listings:
“Face Off” by Chelsea Curto: Emerson (Emmy) Hartwell has waited for a spot on an NHL roster since she became a professional hockey player, and this season, she’ll finally get a chance to showcase her talents with the struggling D.C. Stars. Maverick Miller is the best player in the league, but he’s never had a winning record. Team captain and desperate to turn things around, he agrees to play nice with the fiery new left-winger even though they’re total opposites.
“High Sticking the Heart” by Marie M: Ariella Contreras doesn’t need distractions. She’s fought too hard for her independence to let tradition, family expectations, or a man derail her career. So when a tall, cowboy-hat-wearing Texan in too-tight Wranglers approaches her at a bar and begs her to be his fake date to dodge an ex? She should’ve trusted her gut and told him to get lost. Because the guy she’d never see again? Yeah, he’s Dalton Langley – the star player on the hockey team she’s been hired to be the strength and conditioning coach for. Oh, and he’s her new boss’s son.
“Long Shot” by Kennedy Ryan: Iris DuPree meets August West in a sports bar during her last semester of college. It’s the conversation of a lifetime and sends sparks flying in every direction. The connection is undeniable ... but the timing is all wrong. August is poised for the NBA draft, and Iris belongs to another man – basketball’s “golden boy” and August’s long-time rival.
“Cleat Cute” by Meryl Wilsner: Grace Henderson has been a star of the US Women’s National Team for ten years, even though she’s only 26. But when she’s sidelined with an injury, a bold new upstart, Phoebe Matthews, takes her spot. 22-year-old Phoebe is everything – and the Grace isn’t – a gregarious jokester who plays with a joy that Grace lost somewhere along the way. The last thing Grace expects is to become teammates with benefits with this class clown she sees as her rival.
“Skate It Till You Make It” by Rufaro Faith Mazarura: Ari Shumba never expected to make it to the Winter Games, let alone be the one to lead Great Britain’s women’s ice hockey team through the most important competition of their lives. … Drew Dlamini has always feared taking risks. After breaking up with his girlfriend and dropping out of college to handle a family crisis, he’s desperate for a fresh start. When he finds himself in London for the holidays, he rekindles his dream of becoming a professional photographer. When Ari and Drew meet at a New Year’s Eve party, neither of them is looking for love. … But when they unexpectedly cross paths in the snowy Swiss Alps two months later, their feelings for each other rise to the surface.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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Now a septuagenarian, I first was transfixed by the ballet beauty of Olympic ice dancing, and transformed by the athleticism and sheer competitive teamwork of…women’s roller derby. I wasn’t allowed much tv access (grainy black & white) as a kid, nonetheless the San Francisco Bay Area Bombers became must see sports entertainment. Proudly fierce and talented athletes who gave no quarter to opponents or referees for that matter. Only baseball was higher on my list of favorite team sports. Sports are the human form in motion, motion is art, art is beauty and where beauty resides romance is a frequent visitor.
Great news about people recognizing the importance of this, and books about it proliferating into the mainstream. Thanks, Jane.