Sarah

ALT Over a background of a blue pine tree silhouette is the cover of IF ONLY YOU by Chloe Liese. It’s orange, the title text in dark blue, & features a woman in the foreground with long red hair wearing a blue soccer kit, holding a soccer ball propped between her elbow & hip. In the background to the left is a man in white & black hockey gear with wavy dark hair & scruff. Above the title reads “Fake friends. Real benefits.” Below says, A Bergman Brothers Sister Novel.”

ALT Ziggy I’m the youngest player on the National Soccer team, the baby of my family, and thoroughly sick of being underestimated, so I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. Which is where my brother’s best friend and teammate, the infamous Sebastian Marchand, comes in. Seb needs to rehab his reputation. I want to give mine an edge. So I propose a fake friendship with real benefits: spending time in the public eye, my good-girl image and his bad-boy notoriety rubbing off on each other. He’s my devious, dark-haired fantasy come to life, but his destructive ways make it easy to keep him in the (fake) friend zone. Or so I thought, until I start to see the heart of gold he’s been hiding beneath that sinister surface…

ALT Sebastian Like any self-respecting reprobate, I’ve been spiraling downward, and finally I’ve hit rock bottom. My hockey career and sponsorships are in jeopardy, and while I’m not ready to actually reform my ways, I’m happy to pretend that I have, to secure the life I’m on the brink of losing. So when my best friend’s sister, Ziggy Bergman, proposes a public “friendship” to revamp our reputations, it’s an offer I can’t refuse. Up till now, I’ve stayed away from Ren’s sweet, shy little sister to avoid any risk of ruining my one good friendship. But I reassure myself there’s no risk in our scheme. I’ll fake a friendship with Ziggy, fix my reputation, and get back to hockey, the one and only thing I love. At least, it was, until what began as a transactional arrangement became the most loving relationship I’ve ever known.

ALT IF ONLY YOU is a brother’s best friend, (fake) friends with benefits romance about a bighearted, quietly fierce soccer star on the autism spectrum, and a thoroughly unprincipled, almost irredeemable hockey player who has celiac disease. Complete with an absurd level of mutual pining, meddling family and friends, and a spicy slow burn, this standalone is the sixth in a series of novels about a Swedish-American family of five brothers, two sisters, and their wild adventures as they each find happily ever after.

ALT An illustration of a white couple sitting at a cafe table over a chess game, autumn leaves twirling to the ground. The woman is white with shoulder length brown hair & blonde tips; she wears a long sleeve yellow dress & holds a cup of coffee cradled in her hands as she smiles coyly at the man across her. The man is white with short dark blond hair & round glasses; he wears a white button up shirt beneath a blue v-neck sweater, & khaki pants. He rests his chin on his hand & grins softly at the woman across him.

ALT Two Wrongs Make a Right Epilogue (One Year Later) Song: “Weekend,” Sumbuck and Savannah Conley Jamie: “Dammit, James.” Bea scowls at the chessboard. “What?” Her gaze flicks up to me, those beautiful sea storm eyes–a breathtaking striation of gray, green, and blue–pinning me in place. My heart thuds inside my chest. Will it ever not do that when she looks at me this way? Like I’m the only person she’ll play chess with and entrust her brutal competitive streak, like I’m the one she wants to make pay for beating her by grabbing a fistful of my crisply ironed dress shirt and turning me into a wrinkled, blissfully undone mess? I hope not. And I hope I haven’t ruined a plan that’s only barely underway, a plan that’s been weeks in the making. I’m not doing myself any favors, beating her at chess. I meant to lose. Spectacularly. But I seem to inadvertently have just backed her into a corner without even knowing it. Dammit, James, indeed. I grimace at the board and mutter, “Oops.”