All of the books in the Chicago Stars contemporary romance series are built around the world of professional athletes and the women who want to climb them like trees. It’s a rarefied bubble that allows for the same kind of lifestyle fantasy as the aristocratic and wealthy world of historical romance. Almost every story also features an older couple getting a second chance at love.
- It Had to Be You
- Heaven, Texas
- Nobody’s Baby But Mine
- Dream a Little Dream
- This Heart of Mine – only Kresley Cole has ever made me angrier
- Match Me If You Can
- Natural Born Charmer – very entertaining and I recommend it
Susan Elizabeth Phillips is a good writer with a successful formula and a long career. She’s clever and witty, but more than one of these books suffers from tropes that are outdated and/or offensive. Since Natural Born Charmer is the most recent of the series, it is the one I would recommend. I did try Call Me Irresistible and The Great Escape from her more recent collection. The former never captured my attention and the latter had a love scene involving the literal use of a licorice whip. Yowch.
It Had to Be You – 1994
