Lovebird Book Reviews: March Madness

Hello readers! Welcome to Lovebird Book Reviews where I, Avary King, review/recommend the latest and greatest of everyone’s favorite genre: romance. This is a spoiler FREE zone!

Welcome back Lovebirds! For this week’s edition, I have decided to be a little trendy. If you are like me and live in America you have been bombarded by one thing in the past month; March Madness. While I am not a loyal basketball viewer, during March I always find myself swept up in the fun aspects of March Madness. Drama, rivalries, and Cinderella stories make for incredible entertainment. Before I know it, I am wearing a Caitlin Clark jersey, while braiding my hair like Paige Bueckers. However, as I mentioned before I know virtually nothing about college basketball. Every year, my work friends create a bracket tournament where we all put in ten dollars and whoever has the winning bracket gets the money. Due to my lack of knowledge, I always pick teams based on pleasing colors and my favorite mascot (I do not recommend this strategy as I have never won the bracket tournament). But this year something felt different. I felt discouraged not knowing who actually had a chance at winning it all. I thought: what kind of bracket would it have to be for me to have a legit understanding of the teams? Then it hit me: March Madness of Books. For this week’s article, I have created a bracket of some of my favorite books. I chose 6 troupes to serve as my categories and put two books AKA teams per category. This was so much fun and I would recommend doing a bracket for any of your favorite things.

I would recommend any books in this bracket so if you have not read any of these add them to your TBR immediately. Enjoy!

I would also like to add a call to action for romance authors to get their sh*t together when it comes to female protagonists in sports romance books. I was going to write this article on sports romance with female leads, and allI could find was very slim pickings’. I will rip a book in half if I have to read about one more figure skater.

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DISCLAIMER: Read at your own risk! Some of the books that I recommend mention or talk about sensitive subjects that could be considered triggering for some individuals.

The Trope Teams

Enemies to Lovers:

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

Love Redesigned by Lauren Asher

Fantasy Romance:

Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

Promise of Fire by Amanda Bouchet

Sports Romance:

The Risk by Elle Kennedy

Caught Up by Liz Tomforde

Billionaire Romance:

Twisted Lies by Ana Haung

The Fine Print by Lauren Asher

Arranged Marriage

Brutal Prince by Sophie Lark

Fake Empire by C.W Farnsworth

Fake Dating

The Fake Mate by Lana Furgason

The Fake Out by Stephine Archer

This is my bracket! The decision between The Fake Mate and Twisted Lies is honestly one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. In the end, I even thought about it overnight and ended up with Twisted Lies. In my mind, Christian Harper can do no wrong and I felt it was only fair to put two of my favorite “he’s been secretly obsessed with her for a long time” books up against each other. Levi Ward almost tipped the scales for me, but honestly Twisted Lies has everything I want from a book: fake dating, an amazing female protagonist, a little bit of mystery, a protective male MC, billionaire romance, and he falls first. I could go on and on. This was so fun and happy March Madness to all!

The Winner!

Twisted Lies