I won’t call this book Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce fanfic. It’s much better than that. But if you’ve ever imagined what life might be like for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, then Katie Cotugno’s Heavy Hitter might give you some idea.

Lacey Logan is a world-phenomenon-level pop star. (Yes, think Taylor Swift.) She can’t leave the house for so much as a cup of coffee without meticulous planning, her image and life managed down to the smallest detail. So when she meets major league baseball catcher Jimmy Hodges at a trendy NYC nightclub and they strike up an interesting conversation, no one is more surprised than Lacey when she suggests they leave to find a quiet place to chat.

They wind up at a nondescript neighborhood bar, and Lacey shocks herself again when she initiates a very unexpected, fairly intense physical… interlude with Jimmy in the bar’s tiny restroom. Terrified that Jimmy will blab to the media – but mostly embarrassed over her own brazen behavior – Lacey bolts from the bar and back home to LA. They both figure it was a weird, one-off encounter. But when Lacey can’t resist sending Jimmy a snarky DM, they realize there might be more between them.

Over the course of weeks, Lacey and Jimmy engage in a long-distance over-the-phone love affair. They get to know each other better, they have phone sex, and before long, begin to rely on the other for comfort and support. They don’t discuss the future or even define their relationship, but it seems clear that strong emotions have grown between them.

But when the two of them attempt to move their relationship off the phone and into the real world, Lacey’s fame becomes a huge obstacle. Jimmy is unprepared for exactly how intense her fans and the media can be, and when it seems like his own career has been derailed by the circus Lacey always brings to town, Jimmy isn’t sure he wants to handle what it would take to remain involved with her.

I really enjoyed this book, but not necessarily for the reasons I was expecting when I picked it up. It is a romance, to be sure, but the focus of the story is more about how these two struggle to define a relationship within the parameters of Lacey’s huge fame.

While from the outside it looks like Lacey has everything, she is so very lonely. Her only friends are people who work for her, and when she’s not on tour, her life is actually very empty and boring. Because she can’t simply go places, it’s impossible for her to enjoy things so many of us take for granted. Her mother is a raging alcoholic and she’s dealing with an ex-boyfriend who thinks nothing of putting her personal details out there for the world to see.

Meanwhile, Jimmy has his own problems. At thirty-seven, he’s on the verge of retiring, his body so banged up that he’s continually racked with pain. He suffers guilt over the death of his older brother and the fact his one and only marriage ended due, he’s sure, to his failings. So while his feelings for Lacey are real, he’s not sure he has what it takes to make things work.

As a couple, these two have a lot of obstacles to overcome, and their arguments become outright nasty at times. Cotugno doesn’t pull any punches when Lacey and Jimmy start blaming each other when things get rough and up until the end I wasn’t quite sure they were going to make it.

One problem I had – and this is 100% a me thing – the book is written in third person present tense, which I always struggle with. It is jarring for me to read sentences like “…one thing about Lacey is that she knows better than to ever, ever complain…” It feels as if the author is talking to me about a character rather than me reading a story about a character. Again, this is a me thing but it did affect my ability to lose myself completely. I kept getting tripped up by the tenses.

But in the end, I definitely recommend Heavy Hitter to fans of T-Swift or to anyone interested in a behind-the-scenes look at fame. It really paints a picture of being trapped in a gilded cage and how life as a superstar isn’t all sunshine and lollipops.