The plan was to catch footballs, not feelings.
Tomboy Marissa Munns has a passion for acting and athletics.
And she’s just landed a role of a lifetime—fake dating Northwood High’s golden boy quarterback, Archer Montgomery.
Marissa wants to catch the eye of her fellow soccer star crush.
Archer wants to save face after being dumped.
A fake relationship gives them both what they want.
The tomboy … want.
The tomboy gets popularity. The quarterback gets privacy.
The plan is perfect.
Until the lines they’ve drawn begin to blur.
While mending his broken heart, Archer begins to realize that Marissa is everything that’s missing from his life. But how can he convince her his fake feelings have turned real?
Archer’s good at throwing footballs, not throwing his heart on the line.
Falling in love with his fake girlfriend was never part of the plan.
But if he doesn’t tell her how he feels, it could cost him more than just the big game.
A sweet stand-alone high school sports romance.
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One of my favorite authors in young adult fiction!
This book has a lot of my favorite elements: friends to sweethearts, fake dating, sports romance… all add up to a fun, feel good sweet teen romance!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This is now one of my top ten favorite book from this author. I really loved Archer and Marissa together. I would totally recommend this book to everyone.
I volunteered to read this ARC for an honest review. I loved this story about Archer and Marissa. Marissa is a transplant from Texas and has a spitfire attitude. Archer is the star quarterback and is dealing with his breakup with Lexy last year. When he gets overwhelm with the clingy girls chasing him he seeks to hide but Marissa runs into him. They work on a plan to help him. He agrees to hello her get a date with her crush Miller as long as she keeps the clingers away. But a fake relationship turns real. Great HEA in the works.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I had fun reading this tomboy and quarterback storyline. The characters are well developed and engaging and and the storyline flowed easily page to page.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This is the second book in the How to Date a Tomboy series. Meet Marissa and Archer. Marissa wants to catch the eye of the soccer star and Archer, the star quarterback has just been dumped. A fake relationship between them both seems to be the solution. As time passes the lines begin to blur and this fake relationship is turning into something real. Can these best friends take another turn to more? Their hearts are truly on the line now but will someone drop the football? What an amazing story, I was hooked from beginning to end. Such a well written, engaging story, I swear I was right there. Enjoy!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Marissa Munns has a passion for acting and athletics.
Archer Montgomery is the Northwood high schools golden boy. He hires Marissa to be his fake date because he wants his privacy. She wants popularity in school. It is a win win situation.
Archer falls in love with Marissa, but it was not his plan. Will he get the girl or will he be all alone as he wanted?
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
It has been a long time since I was in high school so I always worry if I can connect to YA stories. Christina Benjamin always brings back those memories and feelings of anticipation, joy and even the angst. I was happy that the epilogue let us know what happened to Archer and Marissa after high school graduation. I can recommend this book for all ages, not just young adults.
Rules Are Meant To Be Broken. In this continuation of the Tomboys series, we get spicy Texan transfer Marissa and star-Quarterback-with-a-heart-of-gold paired up with great effect. Another solid HS romance, though with fewer perspectives than the first book – this one just has the two “standard” perspectives from this type of tale, the leading couple themselves. Arguably more loosely coupled from its predecessors (the “back door pilot” and the official “book 1” of this series), this one in particular can work as either the next book in the series (for those who have read the previous books) or as a good entry point to the series/ author (for those who haven’t). Very much recommended.
This is the first time I have read this author and I enjoyed it, it was too cute. Reminded me of my high school days so so so long ago. We meet who are totally different hence the name but you want them together because they balance each other out and just are to adorable
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Marissa life changed abruptly after her parents divorce, she moved from Texas to Pennsylvania. But that was a year ago, and she hasn’t find yet where to fit in. She wants to make the best of her senior year, so she decides to enroll in the soccer team, to make experiences and take advantage of the bonus it will bring: be near and maybe catch the eye of another soccer player, Miller Fields, her long time crush.
But her plans don’t go as expected, and when you add Archer Montgomery, the football quarterback, in the mix, things get confused and a lot more complicated.
This is the second book of the Tomboys series. Loved the characters, the fun and sweetness of the story. Although you can read it as a stand alone, I suggest you also read the first one, you’ll love it too!!
This is the first time I read a book from Christina Benjamin and she did a fabulous job keeping me hooked from page one.
I don’t read a lot of young adult contemporary or young adult romance anymore but this synopsis intrigued me and I read it at a point when I needed something sweet and a little bit emotional.
I am almost always a sucker for the trope of fake relationship and this book gave me that in spades along with all the angst and problems of high school students in love. You get the mean high school cheerleader, the tomboy soccer player and the quarterback, some of them struggling to fight for their freedom of high school hierarchy while other do the total opposite.
Archer and Marissa are two people you root for and they are just so damn cute together. It is just a shame that everything started as a lie because she had a crush on Miller Fields and he needed a helping hand keeping all the hierarchy seeking cheerleaders away. How can a relationship build on a lie become real?
I can definitely recommend this book if you are in need of a sweet, cute, funny and emotional read in this time we are living in now. Stay safe out there and read on;)!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Cute, but a little disappointing
It’s a good story of young adults, well written, but a little cliché with the group of nasty cheerleaders, the young man with whom the girl would like to go out and the one who will help her, but who is closer than the targeted one.
Marissa is a very psychologically strong girl: after her parents’s divorce, she moved and found herself the previous year in a new high school. She had to put her dreams of becoming an actress aside because there is not much for the theater in her establishment and she tried sport. She started softball and this year, soccer. She likes Miller Fields, a soccer player. But she finds herself confronted with another young man chased by girls from high school: Archer who plays American football and who keeps his love for music secret. They’re friends, but when Archer needs help, she intervenes and Archer suggests that they help each other: if she is his fake girlfriend, the other girls will leave him alone and Marissa can get closer to Miller Fields.
Slowly but surely, Marissa and Archer get closer
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book
After meeting Marissa in Tomboys Don’t Wear Pink, I was so looking forward to reading her story, especially since this was going to be Archer’s story, too. All-around good guy Archer is my kind of hero, and – just like with Marissa – I already fell in serious like with him in book #1.
My only complaint (if you can call it that) is actually that Archer seems a little *too* perfect: he’s the first-string Quarterback, he’s a nice guy – basically a human Golden Retriever, only smarter – AND he’s a gifted musician with a great voice. What’s next – world peace?
4.5/5 stars
Another great story by Christina with great characters and great storyline. Looking forward to more from Christina.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
A very cute and charming story. I found it to be cheerful and entertaining. They have great chemistry. Loved their ending as well.
Book 2 in a delightful, G-rated, YA, sports-romance series
This series is a spin-off from the YA trilogy, The Trouble with Tomboys. Ms. Benjamin wrote the third book in that series, which includes these three, delightful, G-rated, YA, sports romances:
Book 1: Playing the Enemy by Maggie Dallen
Book 2: Playing to Win by Stephanie Street
Book 3: Playing the Field by Christina Benjamin
All of the books in this particular series, How To Date a Tomboy, are written by Christina Benjamin, and all three are also delightful, G-rated, YA, sports romances. This series is set in the same high school from Playing the Field, Northwood High (NH), which is located in the fictional small town of Northwood, Pennsylvania. Each book in this trilogy can be read as a complete, standalone story with its own satisfying HEA, and they don’t have to be read in order. But it is much more fun if each book is read in the series, and in order. It is even better if you get a chance to start with Playing the Field, because there are recurring characters in all four books.
The three books of this particular trilogy, How To Date a Tomboy, include:
Book 1: Tomboy’s Don’t Wear Pink
Book 2: Tomboys Don’t Kiss the Quarterback
Book 3: Tomboys Don’t Crush on the Captain
The romantic hero of this book, Archer Montgomery, is a 17-year-old senior. The romantic heroine of this book, Marissa Munns, is the same age as Archer and in the same class. They both appear in all three books in this trilogy.
Marissa and her mother relocated from Texas to Northwood the previous year, after her dad cheated on her mom with his secretary, and her parents went through a messy divorce. Marissa’s passion is acting, but the biggest part she’s ever played in her life has been for her mother’s benefit, portraying the most well-adjusted new kid Northwood has ever seen. Marissa adores her mother, whom she greatly respects, unlike her jerk of a father, and she tries her best to be one less problem for Mom to deal with. Unfortunately for Marissa’s acting dreams, tiny, provincial NH has no official drama department, only a drama club. Marissa did manage to play the lead in the school’s rather pathetic spring production of Mama Mia last year, but this year the stage won’t be available to put on a play because the cheerleaders have commandeered it. Marissa has tried to make the best of things by enrolling in as many different extracurricular activities as possible, in particular, choir and sports. Though team sports certainly won’t figure in her future after she graduates, she is positive that every new life experience she can try out will provide useful insights into the human condition that will help her be a better actor when she attends NYU next year as a theater major. In that regard, last year she got on the softball team, and this year she has switched to soccer. Marissa is not much better at soccer than softball, but soccer has an extra perk. She’s been crushing on a guy on the boy’s soccer team for the past year, and she’s hopeful that her playing soccer will give her a chance to finally catch his eye.
Archer Montgomery is emotionally exhausted by the relentless pursuit of grasping girls ever since he got dumped a year ago by his longtime girlfriend, a beautiful, cheating cheerleader who broke his heart. Just because he’s tall, ripped and handsome, it doesn’t mean he’s nothing but a piece of meat. His only goal right now is to avoid dating, keep a low profile, and simply survive the rest of his senior year, which doesn’t truly matter at all, because his future is set. He’s already been offered a full-ride scholarship to play football at Rutgers starting next year, thanks both to his ability as an athlete, and bringing up his grades last year after being successfully tutored by fellow NH student, Casey Beeler (the heroine of Tomboy’s Don’t Wear Pink).
These two quite different teenagers rarely cross paths until the day that Marissa crashes into Archer and ricochets off the hard wall of his chest in the music wing of NH. In the middle of striking up a pleasantly bantering conversation with Archer, Melissa is startled when he abruptly picks her up, carts her into a nearby, dark, unoccupied classroom, shuts the door and urges her to silence. Marissa isn’t frightened but completely mystified, until it becomes clear that he’s hiding from a throng of giggling cheerleaders, whom Marissa has long referred to as, the “lipstick Mafia,” and whose Mafiosa is Archer’s Mean Girl ex.
This Meet Cute is the start of an unlikely friendship which progresses to the point of such friendliness and trust that Archer dares to ask Marissa to fake date him. Her immediate response is to flatly refuse, until Archer convinces her that it will greatly benefit both of them. Having a girlfriend will protect him from being hunted down by packs of girls. And dating the star quarterback will help Marissa snag the attention of her elusive crush.
This cute, romantic comedy provides an adorable, G-rated, sports-romance mash-up of four extremely popular romance tropes: “opposites attract,” “slow burn romance,” “fake dating,” and “friends to lovers.” Marissa is a terrific heroine who is not only loaded with personality and spunk, but also very empathetic and kind. Archer is explored in this book in a lot of depth. The fact that he is not, and never has been, a “player,” is a delightful plus. He is also a hard worker, sensitive, and trustworthy. In addition, viewing his home life, in particular his relationship with his much younger siblings, makes him especially appealing.
This book offers alternating, first-person points of view of Marissa and Archer, which I very much appreciated. It gives the reader the chance to know Archer with a depth and clarity that is impossible when a romance novel only provides the point of view of the heroine.
I also appreciated that the author provides a thorough HEA in the form of an epilogue which takes place three years in the future.
My only disappointment with the story is that Archer is presented as being as talented at music as he is at football. I would have very much liked to see more focus on that talent in the book.
I rate this book as follows:
Heroine: 5 stars
Hero: 4 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 4 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Overall: 4 stars
I love the “Tomboy” series. Each one is unique. The characters are great and realistic. I like that the story line is focused on developing the characters relationship. Looking forward to the next book in this series.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
(4.5 stars)… unless the Quarterback kisses them first!
This a wonderful friends-to-more, fake girlfriend story. It runs a little longer, but that allows the author to do a great job of developing Marissa and Archer’s relationship believably, & they are such a great couple! Best yet!
*Clean romance level: sweet kisses, nothing graphic
*Language: 1 use of d—ed, 2 of h-llraiser
*Religion: 2 uses of God’s Name in vain, sadly & unnecessarily, but at least not as curses
Loving Your Best Friend Feels Good:
By Korkoi –
Archer was the popular high school quarterback, who didn’t really like the fame. Marissa was the transfer student with a big Texan personality, that just didn’t care what anyone thought or said about her. You know the feeling you get when you read a book, that you just can’t put down and you don’t want it to end; this is the book. It has a great blend of intrigue, swoon, laughter, heartbreak, bitchy bullies and grand gestures. You will definitely enjoy reading this entertaining and captivating book.
I received an ARC of this book from Booksprout and I am voluntarily leaving a review.
Tomboys Don’t Kiss the Quarterback is my first read in how to date a tomboy series and I loved it from page one. I haven’t read a lot of young adult love books but this is one of my favorites so far!!! I didn’t like high school much when i was in it and i loved reading this wonderfull story and sometimes made me wish a was still there or rather in highschool with Marissa !!!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.