{"id":440824,"date":"2026-01-31T12:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/440824\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T12:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:32:11","slug":"if-you-loved-heated-rivalry-you-need-to-read-this-lesbian-wnba-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/440824\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Loved ‘Heated Rivalry,’ You Need To Read This Lesbian WNBA Romance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the unprecedented success<\/a> of Hearted Rivalry, gay sports romances have become a mainstream obsession. But as any women\u2019s sports devotee can tell you, in real life, openly queer women dominate their respective fields, and often fall in love along the way \u2014 for proof, look no further than the long list of every confirmed WNBA couple<\/a>. A league in which one in four players<\/a> is openly queer is the perfect setting for a lesbian sports romance, and thankfully, Cat Disabato\u2019s new book Rooting Interest delivers just that.<\/p>\n

Set at the WNBA\u2019s All-Star weekend, Rooting Interest follows lesbian sports journalist Jennifer Felix, who\u2019s just been yanked off her usual NFL beat to cover the event. After a rocky start interviewing star player Natalie Czapski, the last thing that Felix expects is to find herself taken with the sport\u2026 and, naturally, with Czapski herself. Navigating her attraction to a woman who claims to be married to the game while trying to claw her way back towards her dream career is no easy task. But this is a romance novel, so you can rest assured that, angst aside, these two are headed for a happy ending when the final buzzer sounds.<\/p>\n

As Disabato recently told Go Mag<\/a>, although queer romances within the WNBA are nothing new, finding books about them is markedly harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are actually very few sapphic sports romance books that exist, especially about professional athletes,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve read every single one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you got into the queer romance genre through Heated Rivalry, you can look forward to the same level of thrillingly high-stakes, steamy romance that the Crave series offered in spades. And if you find that you can\u2019t stop thinking about Felix and Natalie\u2019s love story? Well, you\u2019re in luck. Rooting Interest was published by 831 Stories, a romance imprint that aims to create \u201cbook universes\u201d out of their releases. Head over to the company\u2019s website<\/a>, and you can already find fanfiction based on the book, as well as a bonus epilogue set one year after the central couple\u2019s initial meet cute. There\u2019s even a \u201csports romance\u201d hat, in case you want to show up at this year\u2019s WNBA All-Stars game and shoot your shot.<\/p>\n

Unlike the NHL or other men\u2019s sports leagues, the WNBA\u2019s fandom is very online and very vocally gay. Just as Felix discovers the sapphic joys of the sport, Rooting Interest also uses its enticing central romance to make the case for the queer community that the WNBA offers, both on and off the court.<\/p>\n

Get the best of what\u2019s queer. Sign up for Them\u2019s weekly newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the unprecedented success of Hearted Rivalry, gay sports romances have become a mainstream obsession. But as any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[223,27362,207786,99,434],"class_list":["post-440824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-books","tag-lesbians","tag-sex-and-love","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}