Abby Offsides

Abby McIntyre has just ended things with her cheating fiancé, and she is done playing it safe. In a burst of impulsiveness she quits her job, buys a one-way ticket to the UK, and, for good measure, gets bangs. She is hoping a new country will give her a new start.

In Liverpool she finds work with the Mersey Football Club, where she meets Lachlan Ramsay, the team's newly signed Scottish midfielder. Both are lonely and far from home, and the two become close fast. Abby can barely pretend she doesn't feel the pull between them, but there is a complication: Lachlan has a wife who never moved to Liverpool with him, and Abby can't shake her guilt over that.

Then Abby's housing collapses and Lachlan insists she take a room in his enormous penthouse. Now they spend nearly all their time together, and she starts to wonder whether a famous footballer could really be developing feelings for her. The risks are real, though. Her job and his marriage both depend on the two of them staying just friends, so Abby has to ask whether she can afford to be caught offside.

Abby Offsides is Anna McCallie's debut, a funny and warm slow-burn romance full of sharp banter and simmering tension. Beneath the love story is a more thoughtful portrait of a woman who spent years on autopilot and is finally claiming the life and the wants she put aside.