KD Casey’s Breakout Year is a charming and heartfelt opposites attract / fake-dating story featuring a professional baseball player and a former player who now ekes out a living as a writer and occasional model. The slow-burn romance between these two is swoony, sweet, and beautifully done, and the story is a bit different to the author’s other baseball romances in that there’s less focus on game play (something this allergic-to-sports reader appreciated!) and more on the politics surrounding it, particularly on the treatment afforded to players from minorities by management and other players. Add in the exploration of the characters’ individual approaches to Judaism – one is Orthodox, the other is not – and it all adds up to a thoughtful, insightful and deeply touching love story.

Top pro-ball player Eitan Rivkin had thought he’d be playing for the Cleveland Crooks for the rest of his career, until, without warning, he’s traded to the New York Cosmopolitans a bare minute before the end of the trade deadline. A mid-season trade means an immediate departure, so Eitan is off to the Big Apple without even having the time to say goodbye to his teammates, and not long after he arrives, is herded into a press conference – at which he decides, on the spur of the moment, to make a comment that pretty much indicates he’s queer (and, by extension, that that is the reason he got traded.) This doesn’t go down at all well with the Cosmos’ management, so in an attempt to limit the damage, they suggest finding him a fake-girlfriend – but Eitan isn’t keen on the idea. A few days later, he changes his mind, but says he’d prefer a fake-boyfriend; he’ll be a free agent once the season is over and he wants any team he signs with to know and accept that he dates men – plus dating men is new for him, and he doesn’t want to put anyone he might date for real later on through “all the media stuff”.

So he meets with his agent to ‘vet’ potential fake boyfriends from among the candidates sent by a modelling agency. A few questions quickly reveal that the first two aren’t what Eitan is looking for, but the third… well, he doesn’t get a chance to ask the third any questions because when he walks in, the man takes one look at Eitan and hurries out. A flash of recognition sends Eitan out of the room and after him, and as he catches up with him, he gets the chance to take a proper look – tall and handsome with sandy brown hair and deep brown eyes, and wearing a kippah – and his memories click into place. It’s been seven years since he last saw Akiva Goldfarb, but it’s unmistakably him, the friend he’d made when playing in the Arizona Fall League who’d promised they’d see each other again in the spring and then just… disappeared.

Eitan talks Akiva into coming back and explains that he needs someone to go on a couple of dates with him, do a few photo ops, that sort of thing, and that Akiva will, obviously, be paid for his time. Eitan can sense Akiva is wary – and is surprised to discover that he really, really wants him to take the job.

Akiva walked away from baseball seven years earlier when he realised that playing professionally would mean having to stifle important parts of his identity, that being both Jewish and queer weren’t things he was prepared to hide. So even though he was on the verge of a major league career, he quit – which landed him in trouble with his family (from whom he’s now estranged) and with a mountain of debt he’s still wrestling with. After putting himself through college, he’s now working as a PA/ghostwriter to a very successful mystery writer and doing a bit of modelling on the side now and then, and his experiences have made him guarded and very protective of the life he’s carved out for himself; it may be a small one, but he’s done it on his own.

Eitan is such an endearing character. He’s warm, generous, outgoing and impulsive, and from the moment Akiva walks back into his life, he’s determined to find a way to keep him there. It’s pretty obvious from the start that there’s nothing fake about their relationship in Eitan’s mind – he just has to find a way to prove to to Akiva that he wants there to be something real between them. Their slow-burn romance is an absolute delight and the author does a fantastic job with the fake-dating trope, all those glancing touches and longing looks and soft kisses – for the camera, of course – and the conflicted feelings underneath it all, each wishing for something more but held back by the knowledge that it’s all just for show.

Eitan’s open-hearted, sunny nature is an excellent contrast to Akiva’s prickly reserve and hard-earned cynicism. He’s one of those people who doesn’t seem to believe he deserves the love of those who care for him and he views his decision to quit baseball as weakness, rather than a courageous refusal to hide who he is for the sake of an institution that was unwilling to make space for him. Akiva is one of those people who seems to be running just to stand still; he’s just about getting by, and the contractual nature of the arrangement between him and Eitan adds another layer of complication to their relationship. Akiva doesn’t want Eitan’s money to solve all his problems; he’s working hard to pay off his debts and doesn’t want to be indebted to anyone ever again, not even the man he’s falling for. I liked that the author doesn’t just handwave away the issue of the disparity in their financial situations, and I liked that Eitan is quick to realise that it’s an issue for Akiva and not one that can be easily solved.

KD Casey frequently centers Jewish characters in their books, but I think this is the first one in which both leads are Jewish. Eitan’s parents immigrated from Russia in the 1990s and are fairly secular whereas Akiva is Orthodox, and I liked the way the author explores the variety of observance (of religious practices) within the Jewish community through Eitan and Akiva’s differing approaches to their faith.

Sadly, the homophobia Eitan faces in the story – from former teammates he’d thought were friends, from management, from fans – feels all too real, whether it’s open and obvious or quieter and more insidious. Through Eitan and Akiva’s experiences, the reader is asked to consider whether resistance is walking away from something that refuses to make space for us, or if it’s staying put and fighting for our right to be there.

My only criticisms of the book are to do with a minor secondary character – Eitan’s former long-term girlfriend realising before he did that he was gay and deciding off her own bat that she would act as his beard without even talking to him about it felt odd – and a late-book plot point that feels a bit unnecessary and doesn’t really go anywhere.

Those are minor issues, however, because I enjoyed Breakout Year very much. It’s a lovely read, a gentle, tender romance between two people who really do belong together and know how to bring out the best in each other.