modern courtship

Meg Bloomberg did not see it coming when her husband Vance left her, writing a note on the back of a Home Depot receipt and moving out. They’d only been married a a couple of years, but Meg had no idea that he’d been that unhappy. To help support him while he was in dental school, she’d set aside her painting in order to make custom cat collars.

Her best friend Annie couldn’t leave Meg to wallow in her unhappiness. She grabbed her friend and dragged her to the nearest pickleball court, to introduce Meg to her latest obsession. And as the months slipped by, Meg found that she really did start to fall in love with the game. It was one of the few bright spots in her life, after her last cat collar delivery went disastrously wrong and then she embarrassed herself in front of the hot guy on the ferry from Bainbridge Island back to Seattle.

But when their neighborhood pickleball courts are under attack, Meg wants to help the community however she can. The courts they used were part of a local school, and the pickleballers were hoping to add some lights, maybe a roof, and definitely some bathrooms. Instead, environmentalists are recommending that the land be turned back into wetlands. Meg marches over to talk to the engineer who decided to take away their courts, and she runs into the ferry guy, the one she embarrassed herself over (and accidentally made out with while he was trapped in her car).

Meg can’t face him and decides they need a different way to get their courts back. So when a tournament is announced, with a cash prize for the winning team, she trains harder than ever to make them proud of her and Rooster, her fellow teammate in the beginner round. But then, out of nowhere, another beginning team shows up to vie for her spot in the tournament. That team? Her ex-husband Vance and his new girlfriend. Now Meg has to get through them in order to win her place in the tournament, but they’re really good. And they’ve been playing longer than Meg has.

And then Ferry Guy shuts down their courts completely.

Meg and Annie decide to take a vacation to Bainbridge Island, which is conveniently also obsessed with pickleball. It should be, as the birthplace of the sport. But since Ferry Guy lives there, real name Ethan Fine, Meg bumps into him. And she finds out that he may not be the monster she thought. He only closed their courts for a few days, while they were too wet to be safe, and then he opened them back up. But he is entering the tournament too, also as a beginner, because he only recently took up pickleball after years of tennis.

Meg finds herself opening up to new possibilities. First, she tried pickleball and fell in love with it. Then she found she could start to open herself up to a new relationship. And she even tries painting again. But will the return of Vance cause her to shut down again? Or can she find her way to a new life of peace, joy, love, and pickleball?

Pickleballers is a sweet rom com with some genuinely funny moments. There is a lot of sweetness in this journey to a new life, and there is a lot of pickleball. I haven’t tried the sport yet, but I have been curious, and it was nice to get so much information about the game in this charming novel. There is a lot going on in this book, so the plot meanders just a little, but I still loved this journey. From the seatbelt to all the Daves to the funny reveal about who Annie’s crush was really on, this book has a lot of clever moments, and I am already looking forward to seeing what author Ilana Long comes up with next.

Egalleys for Pickleballers were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks.