Head’s up: I received a free advanced reader copy via NetGalley, thanks to Atria Books and Katie Chandler.

Rating: 🤷🏻‍♀️/👍🏻

I really wanted to love Backhanded Compliments by Katie Chandler. A sapphic rivals-to-lovers sports romance with a touch of magical realism (the two leads are fated soulmates)? What more could I ask for?

Oddly enough, the answer is actually that I needed a little less:

• A little less of the actual tennis play, because as much as I do actually prefer sports romances to actually include a bit of the sports, this was so tennis heavy that the sections describing the play felt, to me—a person who knows nothing of tennis except ball goes over net—like they were narrated by the adults in Peanuts. Which is to say: I hope all the tennis stuff is true for tennis fans, and I hope they like the play-by-play. But it’s perhaps less approachable to the rest of us.
• A little less repetition, and also fewer adjectives. While I generally liked the flow of Chandler’s writing and the way she used present tense and third-person, the same sentiments (lines about Luca not trusting Juliette’s intentions, for one) were repeated so regularly I started saying “I know, I get it” out loud when they came up again. And as for the adjectives: it’s also the adverbs and the similes. While some of them paint a picture, others actually felt like they distracted me from what was happening in the story.
• And finally: actually none of the magical realism. I’m sorry! I know it’s one of the major plot points! I know it’s the primary source of tension (Luca wants her soulmate and Juliette doesn’t want to have one/lose control)! But something about it didn’t work for me. It felt like the book was trying to do too much, and the soulmate aspect just didn’t always make sense to me? I feel like the story would have worked better if it was just a straight rivals-to-lovers tennis romance.

That said! I loved Luca (Juliette was ok). The anxiety representation felt very real to me as someone who has anxiety. And I did love that we got tennis for a sports romance. While I may know literally nothing about the sport, it was still fun to get something new compared to the other sports romances out there.

Backhanded Compliments released June 10, 2025. (Apologies for the late review; my migraines have been a disaster.)