Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of her father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. On the court, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry; off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship that is out-of-bounds for their small Pennsylvania town in 2004, and for Liv’s conservative mother. As Mack’s desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline, she is forced to reckon with the disconnect between her past and her future-and fight for the life she wants for herself, whether or not Liv will be on the court beside her. Written with the lush longing of Andre Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and all the romance and feeling of the beloved 2000 movie Love & Basketball, Marisa Crane’s sophomore novel is a voice-driven, literary treatment of the big feelings of first love, intimacy, heartbreak, grief, and, of course, sports.
