Book 831: Center Court (Order of Play #1) – Brooke Edwards

This book is a love letter to tennis and it was a gushing, effusive, adoring love letter.

When the review request appeared in my inbox I wasn’t sure about reading it, but it’d been a while since I’d read a MM Sports Romance and we were gearing up for vacation so I thought why not?*

Center Court is a split narrative work between Soren, the up-and-coming young tennis star who is poised to become a legend, and Elias, a fellow tennis player who has stayed on his heels and in the pack of the middle generation for years. There are many other minor characters (including the not-really-evil-but-I’m-still-calling-him-it Mattise) that kind of blend together because between Elias, Soren, and tennis there’s not a lot of room for anything else in this book.

The funny part about this book is just a day or two before I had been mulling over the fact that there aren’t many romance novels that I’ve read where a character gets out of a relationship on the page. In general, they’ve broken up before the book starts and are licking their wounds, but not in this one which was a nice change of pace.

This book starts out with Soren and Mattise still together. They’ve been together for many years at this point and have only ever been with each other. However, Mattise’s dad is incredibly homophobic so they’ve had to keep everything on the DL. The bigger problem is that Mattise just isn’t a good guy. He cares more about himself than anyone else and although he’s good (top-15 in the world) he’s not Soren good and ultimately it pushes Soren away.

In a sport so full of ego as tennis, Elias knows it is not something unique to Matisse. It upsets Elias more because he knows that later, Soren’s joy will take second place to Mattise’s regret.
The thought of Soren’s joy taking second place to anything, anything at all, is enough to make the hair on the back of Elias’s neck stand on end.
He breathes in, holds it, then exhales. He cannot control Soren and Matisse’s relationship and has had many years to come to terms with that.
His head has accepted it, in any case. His heart is a different matter. (Chapter 2)

Meanwhile, Elias has been pining for Soren since he first saw him. He hasn’t done anything other than be there for him and support him. Elias of course rages when he sees sex marks on Soren because he would treat him better, but he just pines away unrequited.

After the break-up, the book runs a pretty standard MM Romance story line until for some reason Edwards threw in a kidnap plot that I could’ve done without. I mean I get why she did it, I 100% thought it was a certain character being a dick and bitter, but to just have it be some rando kind of ruined it for me.

He’s known what those Danish words have meant since he was a lovesick nineteen-year-old, he just never expected to hear them in Soren’s voice rather than the robotic computer one. (Chapter 8)

Tennis is not forever, but they might be. (Chapter 8)

The sex scenes were well written and when Soren and Elias ended up coming out publicly their teams’ reactions was perfectly done and the one scene (I really wish it were longer) when Soren and Elias spend time with Elias’ family between tournaments was so adorable.

Recommendation: I enjoyed this one, but can definitely see that it’s not going to be for everyone. Edwards spends a lot of time on describing the tennis matches (especially at the beginning) and you could easily get lost. I appreciated the story starting with one character in a relationship and then the protagonists finally coming together naturally. I’m not sure where I fall with Edwards as a writer. Her prose is beautiful and you can really feel her passion for tennis, but I’m not sure she’s up to Con Riley or Roan Parrish level, so maybe a mid-tier MM Romance author (which is absolutely nothing to snuff at). I’ll have to read more to make a better decision.

*I received a copy of Center Court via Gay Romance Reviews in return for my honest opinion. No goods or money were exchanged.

Opening Line: “‘The draw gods hate you.’ The words are tinged with wonder, and irritation bubbles over the dread that has settled in the pit of Soren Norgaard’s stomach.”

Closing Line: “‘Win or lose,’ he murmurs to himself as the strobing lights flash across the surface of center court. ‘You have made it this far, what is one more match?'” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)