Verdict: A Formula 1 coach-and-rookie romance with electric chemistry and an unusually good setting, let down by a middle that puts too much of the relationship off the page and a friend group that keeps crowding the leads out of their own book.
Best for: Readers who want motorsport treated seriously, a mentor/prodigy power dynamic with a real age gap, and explicit heat — and who do not mind an ensemble cast taking up space the couple could have used.
Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”, and even the harshest reviewer in our sample singles the scenes out as the best thing in it)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — a 4.27 Goodreads average across 1,057 ratings, with an unusually heavy four-star band rather than a five-star one)
Tropes: Coach and athlete, age gap, sports romance, forbidden by the rules, forced proximity, ice queen, second chance at a career, found family, slow burn, ensemble cast.
Make Your Move is Melissa Brayden’s contemporary motorsport romance, published in April 2026, and it is set inside an all-women Formula 1 feeder academy — a fictionalised version of a real thing — where a fearless, showy young driver is assigned to the retired prodigy whose career ended in a crash and who now has to coach her.
The numbers are strong without being spectacular for this author: 4.27 on Goodreads across 1,057 ratings and 183 written reviews, 4.6 on Amazon across 751 with a 71/23/6/0/0 distribution, and 4.37 on romance.io. What is interesting is the shape rather than the height. In a sample of thirty Goodreads reviews the four-star band is as large as the five-star band, which is not how a book people loved usually looks. Both halves of that are worth understanding before you start.
What Is Make Your Move About?
This is sports romance in the strict sense: the sport is not a backdrop, it is the machinery of the plot and of the power imbalance. Formula Next is an academy that fast-tracks women toward Formula 1, which means everything between these two women happens inside a professional hierarchy with results published every weekend. The romance is forbidden not by taste but by the job — a coach and the driver whose career she is responsible for — and the book is clear-eyed that this is what makes it risky.
Reese is introduced through what has always worked for her: raw ability, showmanship, and the confidence to skip the parts other people had to learn. Sloane is introduced through what she assumes she is finished with — a career that ended in a crash, a spotlight she left, and any expectation of wanting something badly again. The age gap between them is real and readers name it as a draw, but the gap that matters more is experience: one woman has already had everything the other is chasing, and lost it.
What Makes This Sapphic Sports Romance Work
- The racing is not wallpaper: Motorsport is the single most-discussed element in the reviews. Readers who knew nothing about Formula 1 report following it easily; readers who follow it closely report recognising it, which is a hard pair of boxes to tick at once.
- The tension in the professional frame: Every private moment is happening inside a working relationship with consequences attached, and reviewers repeatedly describe the charge between them as the book’s strongest quality.
- Sloane is not a stock ice queen: One reviewer’s summary is that she is bad at pretending to be one, which is a fair description of what the book does — the reserve is a scar rather than a personality.
- The heat delivers: This is the one point of agreement across the whole rating range. The reviewer who gave the book a single star still says the explicit scenes are good.
- An ensemble that some readers love: The academy is populated, and a large share of positive reviews name the side characters and the friend group. The same element is the loudest complaint from the other side, which makes it the fault line of the whole book.
Book Synopsis
Reese Maddox has never had to work at the part of driving that comes naturally. She is fast, fearless and good on camera, and that combination has carried her to the edge of the only door that matters. Then it stops being enough. The invitation to Formula Next — an all-women academy built to move drivers toward Formula 1 — is both a promotion and a verdict: whatever she has been doing on instinct now has to be taught to her properly, by someone who is allowed to tell her she is wrong.
Sloane Foster was the one everyone expected to make it. A crash ended that, and what followed was a long, deliberate retreat from a sport that had been her entire identity. She comes back as a favour rather than a comeback, on the other side of the pit wall this time, and with no interest in being anyone’s redemption story. Coaching is a job she can do at arm’s length. That is the plan.
Reese does not do arm’s length. She is loud where Sloane is contained, reckless where Sloane has learned exactly what recklessness costs, and impossible to teach without paying close attention to. The rules of the academy are not ambiguous and neither woman pretends otherwise. What accumulates instead is everything that happens around the rules — the late debriefs, the data sessions, the drive back to the paddock — until the question stops being whether either of them wants this and starts being which of them is willing to risk a career to say so.
My Review
The setting is the reason to read this. Sapphic romance has plenty of sports books and very few that pick a sport this technical and then actually commit to it. Formula 1 is a hard sell in fiction because the drama is distributed across engineering, strategy and politics rather than concentrated in one athlete, and this book solves that by putting the reader inside a coaching relationship where all of it has to be explained out loud anyway. Readers who came in knowing nothing say they followed it without effort. That is craft.
The second strength is the shape of the power dynamic. A coach and a driver is a better engine than a boss and an employee, because the authority is technical rather than administrative — Sloane’s power over Reese is that she is right, and Reese’s resistance is not insubordination but ego. That gives their scenes something to be about other than attraction, and it is why the charge between them is what reviewers reach for first.
The problem is the middle, and the complaint is specific enough to be useful: a good number of readers feel the relationship develops off the page. The reviewer who put it most precisely wanted more on-page romance and felt the getting-to-know-you happened in the gaps — and the reason the gaps exist is the ensemble. The academy is full of other drivers, and there are long stretches where the friend group has more screen time than the couple. Some readers love that and say so; a meaningful minority feel the leads were crowded out of their own novel. It also reads to several people as series groundwork, which is a reasonable thing for a first book to do and an irritating thing to be reading when you wanted this couple.
The other honest note is pace. This is 410 pages and the low-star reviews use the word boring, plainly and more than once. That is a minority position — the Amazon distribution has nothing at all below three stars — but it is a consistent minority, and it lines up with the off-page complaint: if the romance is happening between scenes, the scenes have to carry the weight, and for some readers they do not. Several also say it fizzles toward the end, and at least one found the epilogue corny enough to name.
None of that touches the heat, which is where the reviews are unanimous in a way they rarely are. romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”, and the single one-star review in our sample makes a point of exempting the sex scenes from its complaints. If you want the specifics of what this book does well and badly compressed into one line, it is a very good couple in a very good setting with too much happening around them.
My honest note: The best Formula 1 sapphic romance you are likely to find, which is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Read it for Sloane and Reese and the paddock; accept that you are also reading a series pilot with a cast to introduce.
| Element | In Make Your Move |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Reese Maddox & Sloane Foster — a flashy young driver and the retired prodigy assigned to coach her |
| Core tropes | Coach and athlete, age gap, forbidden by professional rules, forced proximity, ice queen, found family |
| Setting | Formula Next — a fictional all-women academy feeding drivers toward Formula 1 |
| Heat level | 4/5 — explicit open door, and the most consistently praised element in the reviews |
| Series | Billed as A Formula Next Romance in the Amazon title; no second book is listed yet and Goodreads carries no series entry |
| Content notes | A career-ending crash and its aftermath, injury, professional power imbalance, explicit sexual content; no published content-warning list exists for this title |
How Spicy Is Make Your Move?
Four out of five. romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”, its second-highest tier, and reader corroboration here is stronger than usual: the scenes are the one element that survives every negative review in our sample intact. That matters for a book with a coach-and-athlete premise, because the alternative — a professional-boundary romance that fades to black at every turn — would have very little to show for its own risk.
There is nothing to flag in advance beyond the power dynamic itself, which the book treats as a real professional hazard rather than a fantasy, and no reviewer raises a consent concern. For the same band on the site, Learning Curves runs a comparable mentor-and-student gap at 4/5, and Boss of Her is 4/5 with the power imbalance made formal.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want a sport written properly rather than gestured at, you like a mentor/prodigy dynamic with a real age gap, you read for chemistry and want the explicit scenes to actually land, and an ensemble cast reads as world-building to you.
You may want to skip it if: you want the couple on the page in almost every scene, you have limited patience for 410 pages, side characters being set up for future books irritates you, or you need the emotional development shown rather than implied.
In short: a terrific couple and a terrific setting inside a book that keeps looking away from them.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
This one arrived with an apparatus behind it — NetGalley ARCs, review copies through Luna Literary, and an author with a long backlist — and four months on it has 1,057 Goodreads ratings, 183 written reviews and 751 on Amazon, plus a Kindle rank inside the top fifty in both Lesbian Fiction and Lesbian Romance. What it does not have is any outside coverage: no trade reviews, no StoryGraph community data visible without an account, and only fifteen romance.io ratings. The audiobook is read by Quinn Riley and runs fourteen hours and thirty-three minutes.
Prefer audio? Listen to Make Your Move on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Racing, first and overwhelmingly — it is the single most-mentioned thing in the reviews, and the recurring note is surprise that a technical sport turned out to be readable and sexy. Second, the chemistry, which reviewers describe as electric from the first meeting and specifically praise for surviving the professional constraints rather than ignoring them. Third, the leads as a pair: a goofy, showy Reese against a Sloane whose composure keeps failing her. And fourth, the heat, which is the one thing nobody in the sample disputes.
What readers argue about and complain about: The romance happening off the page, above everything. Readers who otherwise enjoyed it say the getting-to-know-you was skipped and they wanted more of the couple actually together. Second, and causally related, the ensemble: a number of reviewers say the friend group appears more than the leads do in stretches, and that the book reads like it is setting up a series. Third, pace — the low-star reviews use the word boring without qualification, and one describes 410 pages as a slog. Fourth and smaller, the ending: several say it fizzles, and at least one found the epilogue corny. The genuine split is between readers who want an academy full of people and readers who want two of them.
The series question worth asking first: The book resolves. Reviewers confirm an HEA and an epilogue, and nobody in our sample reports a cliffhanger, so it can be read on its own. What is unresolved is the run itself — the Amazon title bills this as A Formula Next Romance, but no second book is listed, Goodreads carries no series entry, and one reviewer notes she could not tell whether the author had confirmed more. If you dislike buying into an incomplete run, that is the honest state of it: a complete romance that behaves like a first instalment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Make Your Move end on a cliffhanger?
No. Reviewers confirm an HEA and an epilogue, and nobody in our thirty-review sample reports a cliffhanger, though several say the ending fizzles rather than peaks.
Is Make Your Move part of a series?
Yes. The Amazon title carries the series line A Formula Next Romance. No second book is listed yet and Goodreads has no series entry, so how long the run will be is not public.
How explicit is Make Your Move?
A 4/5. romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”, and the scenes are the one element praised across the whole rating range, including by the harshest review in our sample.
Do I need to know anything about Formula 1?
No. Multiple reviewers say they came in knowing nothing and followed it easily, because the coaching premise means the sport gets explained on the page.
Is there an age gap?
Yes, though no ages are published. Sloane is a retired driver coaching a younger prodigy, and readers name the age gap as one of the draws.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes, narrated by Quinn Riley and running fourteen hours and thirty-three minutes. It is stocked on Libro.fm.
If You Loved Make Your Move, Read These Next
Learning Curves is the closest match on the site — the same mentor-and-prodigy shape with a verified age gap, at the same heat level and in a much smaller cast. Boss of Her takes the professional power imbalance and makes it the whole subject. And Midnight Rain is where to go if what you actually want is two women alone on the page for 500 pages with nobody else in the room. More in our workplace Kindle Unlimited list and across all our book reviews.
The Bottom Line
Make Your Move sets out to write a Formula 1 romance that respects the sport, and it does: the racing is legible, the coaching relationship gives the attraction something real to push against, and the explicit scenes are the strongest in this author’s recent work. What it does not manage is keeping its own couple centre stage — too much of their development happens between chapters, the academy’s ensemble takes room the leads needed, and the last stretch loses tension. If you want motorsport and a mentor dynamic and you can live with a populated book, it is worth the 410 pages. Check Make Your Move on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Make Your Move ranks as a specialist sports romance with mainstream chemistry — technically confident and genuinely charged, held back by an ensemble that crowds its leads and a middle that happens off the page, and best approached for the paddock and the power dynamic rather than for intimacy on every page.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ 4.27 across 1,057 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 4.6 on Amazon, nothing below three stars
- ✓ Top-50 Kindle rank in two categories
- ✓ Four-star band as large as the five-star band
Romance ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Chemistry praised in almost every review
- ✓ Professional stakes give it real friction
- ✓ Explicit scenes land for every reader
- ✓ Development repeatedly reported as off-page
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.1/5
- ✓ Reese and Sloane clearly distinguished
- ✓ Sloane’s reserve written as injury, not type
- ✓ Side cast loved by half the reviewers
- ✓ Same side cast crowds out the leads
Writing ★★★★☆ 4.1/5
- ✓ Technical sport made legible to newcomers
- ✓ No complaints about prose or editing
- ✓ Coaching scenes carry real information
- ✓ Epilogue called corny by more than one reader
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ The crash and its aftermath given weight
- ✓ Career risk makes the choice cost something
- ✓ Readers report investment in both leads
- ✓ Several say the ending fizzles
Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ romance.io bands it “Explicit open door”
- ✓ Scenes praised across the whole rating range
- ✓ Even the one-star review exempts them
- ✓ Frequency lower than the page count suggests
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ HEA with an epilogue, no cliffhanger
- ✓ Readable as a complete standalone
- ✓ Career and romance both resolved
- ✓ Tension drains before the finish
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 14h33m audiobook read by Quinn Riley
- ✓ Racing detail rewards a second pass
- ✓ Strong scenes worth returning to
- ✓ 410 pages and a slow middle discourage it
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