Training Ground Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A well-written, emotionally intense YA opener about two teenage soccer players whose long-distance friendship becomes first love — knowledgeable about the sport and honest about hard things, but it is book one of six, and it ends somewhere painful. Readers who loved it went straight on to book two.

Best for: Readers who want a slow-building, coming-of-age sports story and are ready to commit to a series.

Heat level: None (YA; no sexual content)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5 — a 4.21 Goodreads average across 666 ratings, 3.87 on StoryGraph from 119 reviews, and 4.5 stars across 439 Amazon ratings)

Tropes: Friends to lovers, long-distance friendship, coming of age, youth national team, slow burn, dual POV, series opener, unresolved ending.

Training Ground is Kate Christie’s 2016 lesbian young adult sports novel, the first of six Girls of Summer books following the same two players. At a 2003 tournament in Southern California, fifteen-year-old Jamie Maxwell meets Emma Blakeley, a year older and already on the national team’s radar.

It holds a 4.21 average across 666 Goodreads ratings, with 82% of them four or five stars, 3.87 on StoryGraph from 119 reviews, and 4.5 stars across 439 Amazon ratings.

What Is Training Ground About?

Jamie, from San Francisco, wants to make the US youth national pool and get past an incident she won’t talk about. Emma, from Seattle, is the daughter of a surgeon and a nurse and is drawn to people who are hurting — and she can tell Jamie is.

One late-night walk turns into a friendship that survives hundreds of miles, phone calls and emails, holiday visits and the pressures of elite youth soccer. Somewhere along the way it becomes more — and both of them have to work out whether it can survive what they each want from life.

What Works in This Sports Novel

Authentic soccer: Readers who play or follow the game praise Christie’s knowledge of the youth and national-team world.
Character depth: Readers call it two character studies, and 85% of StoryGraph readers said the development was strong.
Emotional honesty: Every StoryGraph reader who tagged a mood chose emotional; readers describe laughing and crying.
Not a formula romance: One reader values that the pair come together and drift apart, have other relationships and make real mistakes.

Book Synopsis

At fifteen, Jamie Maxwell wants three things: a place in the youth national pool, to move past something that happened to her, and — someday — to kiss a girl. When she meets Emma Blakeley at a tournament, she doesn’t expect anything to come of it.

Emma only agrees to sneak out with her because she can tell Jamie is wounded. Neither of them knows that one night will begin a bond that stretches across years and miles, from California soccer fields to Portuguese beaches and the streets of Vancouver.

My Review

This is the most carefully built of starts. Christie spends a whole book on the foundation — two girls, their families, their ambitions and their wounds — and the friendship at its centre is convincing enough that readers who don’t usually read YA were won over. The soccer is specific without being technical.

The single most repeated warning is the ending: readers call it frustrating, bleak and very unresolved, and several say you should have book two ready — one even suggests it reads like a prequel. It is also heavy throughout, with a sexual-assault backstory and a death in the family, and one reader found the angst almost too much. A few found it long, or felt it needed tighter editing, and one didn’t continue the series.

My honest note: Read it only if you are prepared to keep going; on its own, it is half a story.

Element	In Training Ground
Central relationship	Jamie Maxwell (15, San Francisco) & Emma Blakeley (16, Seattle)
Core tropes	Long-distance friendship, first love, coming of age, youth soccer
Setting	Youth soccer from 2003, San Francisco and Seattle, with travel abroad
Heat level	None — YA
Length	303 pages (Kindle listing)
Series	Girls of Summer #1 of 6 — unresolved ending, continued in Game Time
Content notes	Sexual assault (backstory), death of a family member, grief

How Spicy Is Training Ground?

It isn’t. This is a young adult novel about teenagers, with no sexual content; readers of the whole series say intimacy in the adult books that follow is mostly fade to black.

Readers flag a sexual-assault backstory and a family death as the heaviest material. StoryGraph has no content warnings submitted, but half of StoryGraph mood-taggers chose sad.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a long, slow, emotionally honest sports saga. It is on our sapphic sports romance list.

You may want to skip it if: you need a happy ending in every book, or sexual assault as a theme is not right for you now.

In short: A strong, sad first chapter.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)

On Goodreads the split is 42% five stars, 40% four, 12% three, 3% two and under 1% one. On StoryGraph, 100% tagged it emotional, 50% sad and a third each dark and tense. Christie has a devoted readership — one reader says she has replaced Melissa Brayden as their favourite lesfic author — and many reviews were written after reading several books of the series back to back.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The friendship first. Second, the soccer. Third, the depth of both characters. Fourth, the long-game storytelling.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. Second, the relentless angst. Third, length and editing.

The comparison worth making first: For a complete friends-to-lovers soccer romance in one book, try Finding a Keeper.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Training Ground a young adult book?

Yes. Jamie is 15 and Emma 16 when they meet, and readers describe it as YA and a coming-of-age story; the later books follow them into adulthood and professional soccer.

Does Training Ground have a happy ending?

No — not yet. Readers repeatedly warn that the ending is frustrating and bleak, and that the story continues in book two, Game Time.

What are the content warnings for Training Ground?

Readers mention that Jamie is recovering from a sexual assault and that the book deals with the death of a close family member. Several call it heavy and angsty from start to finish.

Is there sexual content in Training Ground?

No explicit content. It is a YA book about teenagers, and readers of the series say intimacy in later books is mostly fade to black.

Is Training Ground on Kindle Unlimited?

Not at the time of writing — the Kindle edition was listed at $0.99. An audiobook edition is listed on Amazon; we did not find it on Libro.fm.

If You Loved Training Ground, Read These Next

Continue with Game Time, then try Finding a Keeper. For more, browse our sapphic sports romance list or the full Book Reviews archive.

All 25 verified soccer romances, including the six-book Girls of Summer series, are in our Sapphic Soccer Romance Books guide.

The Bottom Line

Training Ground sets out to lay the foundation of a six-book love story, and it does so with care and real feeling. What holds it back as a standalone read is that it deliberately withholds the payoff. Worth it if you will read on. Check Training Ground on Amazon →