At first glance, Home Field Advantage is the age-old love story of a high school cheerleader and the football quarterback…except it’s sapphic! Jack, the football team’s new quarterback, has just moved to town to replace the former QB who died tragically, and the rest of the football team isn’t making it easy for her. The only friend she really seems to have at school is Amber, one of the cheerleaders, who is doing her best to make Jack feel like a part of the team – at least, until both the cheer squad and the football team decide to take matters into their own hands.

I absolutely loved the idea of turning the quarterback/cheerleader trope on its head, and Adler does a fantastic job in its execution. The whys and hows around Jack joining the team do actually feel believable, which was my one concern when reading the book synopsis. I don’t know much about football itself so I can’t really speak on that, but I bought everything that was presented in the book as football facts, so Adler at least did a good job of convincing me.

Amber, Jack, and Miguel are all solid characters with their own desires and drives, and as a reader it’s easy to see where they each are coming from and root for each of them in different ways. None of them are perfect protagonists, but they each undergo substantial character growth through the course of the story, which is exactly what I like to see with good characters.

The one thing that might be difficult for certain readers is the amount of angst in this book. They’re teenagers, so it’s to be expected to some extent, but because of the nature of the story there is definitely more than you’d expect from a rom-com. That being said, there is a good payoff at the end for sticking with it, and the angst that is there does lead to character growth, so I personally think it ended up being entirely worth it.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.