Ellie K Wilde’s Only Between Us is a low-angst, fake-dating football romance. It’s light and fun, but essentially one dimensional in the way it sets up the obstacles for the two leads. For her, it’s geography, for him it’s insecurity and neither are high stakes to overcome so they can be together.

Siena lives in Oakwood Bay on the east coast of the USA where she runs her late dad’s fishing and tackle shop, Ship Happens. She recently ended a long-distance relationship with a professional footballer and is absolutely not interested in doing it again. On the anniversary of her dad’s death, Siena and a friend break into the local football stadium where she meets Brooks, who is training to make an NFL comeback after an early retirement from injury. When some of his messy off-season antics get publicity, he’s told by his agent that he needs to clean up his act. Siena and Brooks have chemistry even as they antagonise each other and after a social pic goes viral, Brooks offers Siena a fake girlfriend gig.

Siena (‘Cece’) Pippen is struggling with working in the tackle shop but keeps it going, out of both love and obligation to her parents. While Brooks is cocky and obnoxious, she can see how dating him will help with both money and business publicity, so it’s a tempting prospect. Siena is very snarky, she’s unfiltered and a bit crazy, which both challenges and charms Brooks.

Once they agree to fake-date, they make a number of appearances at sporting events as Brooks tries to shore up his performance and his reputation. Brooks’ goal is to play again with his old team, the Rebels, back in LA. Siena is not prepared to do long distance again as it was the reason for her last breakup, and Brooks only wants to play with the Rebels, so they agree this fake-relationship has to be temporary, even as it begins to feel more real to them both. The middle of the book traipses along as they get to know each other and we have a lot of Brooks’ internal monologue as he falls for Siena. It’s all light and no shade for the most part, even with some minor setbacks for Brooks to both his recovery and his chances of a re-signing.

I liked that these two are good people who quickly look out for each other as they fall in love. Brooks is generous (to a fault) and honest with Siena about his growing feelings for her. He loves being in love, and he is so unguarded, even after being burnt badly in a previous relationship, and even though he doesn’t know Siena very well at all. Siena is slowly charmed by him, and loves the idea of them being together, but she’s determined to stay in Oakwood Bay.

That said, I didn’t love the lack of character development for either of them, especially Brooks. His internal dialogue is either about how wonderful Siena is, or about his own insecurity – and not much else. It would have been great if he had learnt how to be more confident in himself and appreciate his own worth, but sad to say, this doesn’t happen. He love-bombs Siena in a way that raised red flags for me, especially when he makes extravagant gestures like buying her a new car. Even when he suspects she has financial troubles, he still buys her twenty different coffees because he doesn’t know how she likes hers. This felt like tone-deaf extravagance to me – I’m surprised Siena didn’t run away screaming.

There’s plenty of opportunity to explore some darker themes, such as the effects of concussion on professional athletes, and the long-term effects of parental abandonment, but these are only touched on superficially. It all wraps up very quickly and neatly.

I’d recommend this one only if you are looking for a light, fake-dating sports romance with hardly any angst and you don’t mind characters who are too good to be true and ultimately unmemorable.