A review by juliana_reads
How You Get The Girl by Anita Kelly

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

This was a bit of a miss for me 🫣

I enjoyed the basketball aspect. I like women’s sports and thought the premise of two coaches falling in love was excellent. I enjoy Anita Kelly’s writing (and liked their previous two books in this interconnected series). 

However:

1. Julie felt like an immature millennial. And I don’t mean because of her relationship inexperience or journey with her sexuality. I mean she personified millennial cringe. Snoozles the cat? Really?  
2. Elle being Julie’s college basketball heroine was weird, both as the set-up for them meeting and in the context of the practice dating/eventual relationship. Julie knows things about Elle that they never even discussed! She tells Elle, "Did you forget I've been obsessed with you my whole life? Because yeah, that's still a thing." Yikes! Is that not a weird power imbalance?  

It should have been that Elle was a former college superstar still healing from the WNBA; Julie was feeling stuck/confused but loved coaching. Then Elle’s foster joins Julie’s team and the rest is history. None of this weird fangirl stuff.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Abandonment