Review

Billie’s always played doubles tennis with her twin brother, Tom. And they’re good. Not quite pro-tennis good, but really good. She has her heart set on winning the Junior Wimbledon doubles title as a last hurrah before university starts in the autumn, so she can prove to her dad that her brother’s not the only winner in the family, and to sort of make things up to her mum, who watched her lose a Wimbledon Under 14s final just before she died. But when Tom develops a health condition, Billie’s forced to look for a new partner at short notice.

Enter gorgeous Harley: her neighbour, her coach’s nephew and a preternaturally talented tennis player. He seems strangely keen to fill that doubles position and train with her. The only problem is that Billie’s never really liked him. He’s flakey and unreliable, undisciplined, always with a different girl on his arm, partying hard with his loser friends and thinking everything’s a joke. He doesn’t know how to persevere or take things seriously. Not like her. But is she becoming a bit predictable? Safe? Stale? Maybe mixing things up will improve her game… on and off the court.

*

I enjoyed this. It’s the second YA sports romance from Ivy Bailey (aka Katy Birchall), and although the content and set up is similar, it’s a significant improvement from her first one (Playing the Field). The pacing’s just as good, but the romance and relationships are much better developed. The main characters spend more time with one another and there’s more romantic tension, romantic payoff and funny banter. The proportion of romance to tennis feels about right. In general, the writing’s just better.

There’s also a lot less alcohol in this book, which is great, because frankly the amount of it in the last book was just plain weird. This book has a normal amount of social drinking. It is technically a ‘sweet’ (not spicy) romance, but the age of the characters (18, post-school) and the situations they find themselves in lead me to put this book in senior fiction (year 10 & up). See content info.

It’s another short one, huzzah: 320 pages. It’s a well written but very straightforward, short first person sports romance. A fun read and an easy sell.

> Click here for content info — spoilers, enter at own risk!

Billie’s dad is focused on her brother Tom’s talent and is seemingly blind to Billie’s (Dad comes around and situation resolves positively); Billie’s mum died four-ish years ago — cancer (backstory); one of Billie’s friends gets into a toxic relationship with one of Harley’s friends who is boorish, possessive, jealous, selfish and ultimately unfaithful (situation resolves positively); Harley’s parents are self-involved, pay very little attention to him and have very low expectations of him; some drinking and drunkenness — the drunkenness is not viewed positively; some well written very passionate kissing; Billie and Harley have sex in a Wimbledon hotel room — the lead up is described, but not in explicit detail, and the sex itself is not shown (fade to black); Billie’s twin brother, Tom, has some health issues: early in the book he’s diagnosed with glandular fever (faints, goes to hospital) and towards the end of the book, he has a ruptured spleen (collapse, life-threatening situation, emergency surgery) — he’s ultimately fine; Tom was being pushed into law by his dad, but he decides to do vet science instead; scattering of f-words and British swears like “twat” and “arsehole”. Main romance is mlw. Minor romances/relationships are mlw, wlw and mlm.

*

Bailey, I. (2025). Game, set, matched. Simon & Schuster.

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