20 Pickleball romance books for sports fans to enjoy

Pick Me by Victoria Schade

As a cowboy romance ghostwriter, Brooke Murphy knows a thing or two about happily ever afters. But following her last breakup, Brooke is feeling fresh out of hot and steamy vibes.

With her next deadline looming and desperate for inspiration, Brooke says yes to every possible romantic opportunity, including a mixed doubles pickleball game, where she meets a tall, dark, and handsome guy taking his pickleball very seriously. A couple of dates with this stranger would be all she needs to crank out her next trope-tastic novel. She just needs to learn how to play. Fast. So what if she’s the least athletic person alive?

Enter Owen Miller, aka The Big Gripper, the secret weapon of Manhattan’s most competitive finance bro pickleball players. The surly coach doesn’t look like a former elite athlete—with his bucket hat, oversized basketball shorts, and flip-flops—but the man can move when the ball heads his way. With enough shameless begging, she convinces him to take her on.

As her game improves, her muse comes back in a big way. Could it be that her feelings for the grump who taught her the difference between a dillball and a dink shot run deeper than just student and coach?

All’s Fair in Love and Pickleball by Kate Spencer

In this sweet and steamy romcom, two rival pickleball players find themselves faking a romance—until they start falling for each other for real. Perfect for fans of Tessa Bailey and Sarah Adams.
 
Bex Martin’s racquet club is her entire world. But the business she inherited from her mother has started to feel more like a sinking ship. That is, until Nikolaus Karras—a former tennis bad boy with an ego as big as his serve—makes himself at home on her courts.  
 
Niko has something to prove, and a high-stakes pickleball tournament is just what he needs to get back in the game after a career-ending injury. When he is finally able to set his ego aside to ask for Bex’s help, everyone assumes that they are a couple—on and off the court.  
 
She needs the prize money to save the club, and he needs a win to restore his reputation. So now they have a fake relationship as well as a doubles partner that they can’t seem to resist. Game on!

Pickleballers by Ilana Long

A pickleball newbie looking to recover from life’s swings and misses crosses paddles with love in this debut romantic comedy.

Meg Bloomberg is in a pickle. When Meg’s ex turns out to be a total player, she and her bestie take off for a mood-lifting pickleball excursion to Bainbridge Island. It’s supposed to be an easy lob, a way to heal, not the opening serve to a new courtside romance that’s doomed to spin out.

No matter how Meg tries, she can’t shake her feelings for Ethan Fine. A charismatic environmental consultant and Bainbridge local, Ethan seems like the real dill. But when Meg discovers that Ethan is sabotaging her home court, she decides the match is over.

It’s time for Meg to take control of her own game. And maybe, just maybe…love will bounce back.

Love and Pickleball by Kira Brady

There’s No Love in Pickleball…

Forty and finally divorced, Celeste Knowles is free to be true to herself…If only she knew who that was. When she’s forced to attend her ex’s lavish wedding, Celeste decides it’s the perfect time to move on-in the banquet hall closet, no less.

But after panicking and running out on her mustachioed stranger, Celeste realizes she needs to start smaller. Maybe pick up an old hobby. Work up to the wild sex with strangers.

Hayden Holstrom, her new pickleball coach, is infuriatingly charming, distractingly handsome-and young-and his easy smile feels suspiciously familiar.

But Hayden has secrets of his own. He’s falling hard for the shy, crossword-loving divorcee, and he’s desperate for a chance to prove their connection is more than a fleeting memory. Can he convince Celeste to risk her heart again, especially when the odds are against them?

Dill-ightful by Stef C R

A positively dill-ightful MM rom-com novella about finding your family, your purpose, and your happy ending.

Welcome to Cold Water, Michigan. Population: 816.

Milo Van Der Meer never expected to be twenty-five and living in a small town with his grandma. Yet, when his parents went to prison for fraud, he was the only one left to take care of her. He spends most of his days surrounded by children and his afternoons at the only gym within a twenty-mile radius. He feels trapped-no social life, no friends, and no dating prospects. That is until he runs into one of his students and her grumpy dad.

Benny Miller cares about three things: his daughter, his gym, and his best friend. Everyone else can mind their damn business. When Milo literally stumbles into his life, Benny doesn’t know what to do with the handsome pickleball enthusiast. Should he give him a job? Befriend him? Kiss him? His head is swimming with possibilities and his heart is slowly making room for another person.

Will the grumpy gym owner finally let his guard down and meet the sunshine teacher on the pickleball court?

Big Dink Energy by Sarah Yarrow

Sloane Lachlan is done waiting for permission. She’s spent three years building Saltgrass Outdoor Co. into the most beloved rental business on the island—paddleboards, kayaks, her latest obsession: pickleball. She’s found her tribe. She’s found her sport. Now she just needs a home for her community’s club before the Coquina Grand Resort prices everyone out with their shiny new premium courts. She has a plan. She has sponsors. She has enthusiasm that could power a small nation.

What she doesn’t have: a facility. And the only available space on the island belongs to a man who actively hates pickleball.

Cal Merritt came home to Saltgrass Key to disappear, not to save anything. He inherited his grandmother’s waterfront tennis facility eight months ago—a beautiful, deteriorating relic of her legacy—and he’s been quietly watching it crumble while he figures out what comes next. Professional tennis ended his identity at twenty-nine. Pickleball is an insult to everything he spent his life earning.

But Sloane Lachlan shows up at his facility on a Tuesday with a business proposal, a visioning energy that borders on nuclear, and the complete inability to read the word “no.”

What starts as a business arrangement becomes something neither of them planned. Cal’s facility becomes the Florida Smash Club. Sloane becomes a constant presence in his courts, his business meetings, and his carefully constructed walls. The renovations are chaos. The community that forms is electric. The banter is relentless. And somewhere between teaching her proper tennis form and losing three straight games to her dubious serves, Cal starts noticing things he can’t unnotice.

Sloane, meanwhile, is learning a dangerous lesson: that the person who looks like they need nothing is sometimes the person who needs you most.

Dinking Around by Sarah Yarrow

Her job is to destroy his club. His mission is to save it. Too bad she’s impossible to resist.

Maria Federov is a ruthless overachiever on a mission: build the Coquina Grand’s new pickleball club into the hottest destination court on the Gulf Coast, then use that triumph to launch her back to the major markets she belongs in. Get in, build the thing, move on. It’s the plan that’s never failed her.

Christian Bacca is the warm-hearted, fiercely protective co-founder of the Florida Smash Club, a scrappy waterfront court that’s been the social hub of Saltgrass Key for four years. He knows exactly who Maria is—he watched her kind come to this island before, saw them polish everything that made it real, then leave. He’s not losing his club to a corporate resort that treats the island like a stepping stone.

Except Maria isn’t leaving. When she keeps showing up at the FSC courts—teaching his friends, charming his community, tearing down his carefully built defenses with dry humor and a smile that catches him off guard—Christian realizes his biggest problem isn’t the rival club. It’s her.

Maria’s always been good at running. She’s never been good at staying. And when the promotion of her dreams arrives in the form of a sleek Tampa opportunity, she has to choose: the ambition that’s defined her entire life, or the scrappy island club and the man who finally made her want to stop dinking around and take the real shot.

Dink Happens by Sarah Yarrow

Six years ago, Bex Callahan left Saltgrass Key and the love of her life behind.

Now she’s back for her best friend’s wedding—six days on the island where everything fell apart, where Cole Hargrove still captains charter boats and somehow looks even better than she remembers.

When a photographer mistakes them for still-together and Bex panics, blurting “Still us” before her brain catches up, she’s stuck in a lie. Just a little fake dating for the wedding week. What could go wrong?

Everything, as it turns out.

Because faking it with Cole means pickleball lessons where she’s aggressively terrible, his hand on her back at rehearsal dinners, late-night conversations that feel dangerously real, and the growing certainty that the lie might be the truest thing she’s ever said.

Between a judgmental pelican named Gerald, an alligator named Gary who’s determined to ruin the tournament, and a group chat that won’t stop roasting them, Bex has six days to figure out if second chances are real—or if she’s about to lose him all over again.

Dink If I Know by Sarah Yarrow

She’s been in love with him for four years. He’s been in love with her longer.
Neither of them has done a thing about it.

Nadia Flores runs Flores Nature Tours, knows sixty-one manatees by name, and can wrangle a rogue alligator with nothing but a broom and stubborn optimism. She’s the Florida Smash Club’s go-to fixer, the calm in every crisis—and, apparently, the only person who hasn’t noticed she’s been in love with Bradley Winston for years.

Bradley Winston doesn’t miss things. Not market trends. Not structural flaws. And definitely not Nadia.

The real estate heir with a spreadsheet brain and a quiet streak a mile wide has been in love with her since the day she handed him a wrench and told him to prove he wasn’t useless. Since then, he’s built his life around her in small, invisible ways—fixing what breaks, showing up when it matters, and keeping one very big secret:

The development deal that could destroy Nadia’s beloved seagrass beds… has his family’s name all over it.

He tells himself he’s protecting her, that she’s better off not knowing.
He tells himself a lot of things that stop working the second the truth starts surfacing.

Because suddenly—
A petition explodes past forty thousand signatures.
An alligator rescue goes viral.
Nadia’s family starts asking questions.
And the Florida Smash Club? All three hundred members?
They’re watching.

Now Bradley’s running out of time.
Nadia’s running out of patience.
And the line between protecting her and losing her is about to snap.

Dink If I Know is a spicy friends-to-lovers romcom featuring an oblivious heroine, a quietly obsessed hero, meddling families, small-town chaos, viral fame, environmental stakes, and a community that absolutely refuses to mind its business.

Manatees. Mangroves. Biscotti.
And two people who’ve been building a life together… without realizing they’re already in love.

Pickled by A.J. Wynter

He’s the grumpiest hockey player in the Sunshine State.

Gideon Bailey is the biggest star in the NHL, he’s also notoriously grumpy. Friends? Women? Distractions. Especially the perky girl next door who struts around in tennis skirts. Gideon’s laser-focus is on one thing: winning.

But when a career-threatening injury sidelines him, his carefully constructed world is shattered. Who is Gideon Bailey if he doesn’t have a hockey stick in his hands?

Will his casserole-delivering, pickleball-playing, single mom neighbor be the key to rediscovering himself? Will he find something in life more valuable than holding the cup over his head?

The Pickleball Girl Finds Her Match by Rebecca Jasmine

In love and pickleball . . . what if the greatest risk is not taking one at all?

Endy Andrews has built a life she loves—coaching seniors, running her youth pickleball league, and keeping her heart safely out of play. But when she meets Sebastian Hall, a charming former tennis star visiting Whisper Hills Country Club, their spark is instant and undeniable.

What begins as a whirlwind romance quickly turns complicated. Sebastian’s glamorous ex returns with unfinished business, and the club’s tennis purists are out to dismantle everything Endy has worked for—including her beloved Picklers program.

With her community on the line and her heart on the verge of breaking, Endy must decide whether love is worth the risk . . . and if second chances are real both on and off the court.

A Pickleball Girl’s Second Chance Christmas by Rebecca Jasmine

This Christmas, could the boy she left behind now be the man she was always meant to love?

For readers who love second-chance romance, holiday sparkle, and heartfelt happily-ever-afters, A Pickleball Girl’s Second Chance Christmas delivers a closed-door romantic escape with festive desert charm and an evening with a mischievous yellow Labrador.

Morgan Shoemaker’s last summer before leaving for college was filled with books, writing, and an exciting first love with Charlie Welch—until life and the illusion she built for social media pulled them apart.

Now, ten years later, on Christmas Eve, Morgan is back at Whisper Hills Country Club, escaping a painful breakup and expecting a quiet holiday alone. Doubts about her picture-perfect influencer life have her questioning what she truly wants. Then a splash from an overexcited Labrador leads to a reunion with the boy who once stole her heart… and who is now very much a man.

A day of teasing, shared memories, and tender confessions under the desert sky has Morgan wondering why she has a million “friends” when the only one she truly wants is once again standing right in front of her.

But when the holiday ends, will they go back to quietly following each other online, or risk following their hearts into love again?

A Pickleball Girl’s One-Week Arrangement by Rebecca Jasmine

She didn’t plan on falling for a pro pickleball player. He didn’t plan on a fake relationship with her. But one sandstorm blew their plans apart.

On the eve of The Victors—the biggest professional pickleball tournament of the year—a massive sand storm tears through Palm Springs, and a flying tent pole knocks Maria Gutiérrez unconscious. She wakes up in the bed of a stranger. A very handsome, very shirtless stranger named Toby Lind, a pro pickleball player with green eyes, a crooked grin, and absolutely no interest in a relationship.

The feeling is mutual. Maria is still dodging her relentless ex-boyfriend, a powerful casino executive who won’t take no for an answer. Toby is scraping by on tournament winnings and a side hustle, desperate to prove that walking away from a six-figure tech career wasn’t the worst decision of his life. Neither of them has room for romance.

So when Toby’s sponsor pressures them into faking a relationship for tournament week, they strike a deal: one week, five rules, and absolutely no kissing on the lips. Maria gets an ex-boyfriend blocker. Toby gets a brand boost. Easy.

Except nothing about this is easy.

Between candlelit margaritas, viral photo ops, nighttime pickleball on a homemade court, and the kind of chemistry that makes their no-kissing rule nearly impossible to follow, their fake arrangement starts feeling dangerously real. And when Maria discovers that the man threatening her beloved family restaurant is the same one who once claimed to love her, the stakes become bigger than any Grand Slam title.

Now Maria must fight for the legacy her great-grandparents built—and decide whether the guy she agreed to pretend with for seven days might be worth keeping for a lifetime.

Getting Pickled by Allison Rayne

Banger? I don’t even know her!

Willow Blackburn is an independent, freelance graphic designer, content to keep her small, trusted circle of friends.

Luca Giordano works an unfulfilling corporate job that leaves him yearning for a greater purpose in life.

Both find enjoyment in playing pickleball, and they just so happen to live in the same neighborhood in the city of Athens, Illinois, which hosts a wildly popular mixed doubles pickleball tournament every year called The Pickle Bowl. Unfortunately, they got off on the wrong foot on what Willow calls “the worst Tinder date in history,” and the reason she has sworn off dating forever.

When Willow’s partner for the tournament succumbs to injury, she finds herself in quite a pickle. Especially when Luca is named as her new partner.

The two of them must find a way to work together as a team if they want a shot at winning. Perhaps they will learn they are not so different after all, and that by opening themselves up to one another their painful pasts do not have to define their future.

In a Pickle by Jane Marlowe

Life can be sour…
Liana Abrams’ life isn’t going the way she’d planned. When she graduated high school and was accepted into a prestigious university, everyone told her she was going places.

But life happened, and Liana unexpectedly finds herself moving back in with her mom at age 26, directionless and learning to manage a chronic disease. Trying to recover, Liana signs up for a pickleball class at her local court… only to discover that her attractive instructor is someone she recognizes from high school.

Life can be sweet…
James Alonso thought he’d be a major tennis star by now, but a career-ending injury caused him to take up pickleball instead. He teaches at the local park and is pleased that the new student in his class is a familiar face.

Sure, he never paid much attention to Liana in high school. She was a bit of a wallflower, while he was the popular golden boy. But now, he can’t stop thinking about her, and he’s determined to take the unexpected opportunity life gave him by putting Liana in his path.

Dink Wars by Wynn Valentine

They were supposed to be rivals. So why does she suddenly want to kiss him instead of beat him?

Lena Park has spent years building Briarwood’s beloved pickleball league—so when grumpy newcomer Gavin Reid moves back to town and tries to shut down her courts, she’s ready to fight with everything she’s got. The problem? The whole town is watching. And meddling. And, apparently, placing bets.

Gavin just wanted some peace and quiet. Instead, he’s trapped in a small-town pickleball feud with a woman who thrives on competition, loves getting under his skin, and looks entirely too good doing it. When a high-stakes bet forces them into a winner-takes-all showdown, their rivalry turns into something else entirely—something involving late-night practice sessions, way too much tension, and a town that refuses to let them ignore it.

Now, Lena and Gavin have one match to settle the score. But when it comes to love and pickleball, is winning really the point?

In a Pickle by Lila Sloane

I came to Willow Ridge for a fresh start. I didn’t expect to get stuck with Chase Maddox—cocky country club prince, reigning pickleball champ, and the human equivalent of a smug wink.

When our doubles partners both drop out, we’re forced to team up for the tournament of the summer. There are rules: no flirting, no fighting, no falling for each other. We break all three before the first match.

Now we’re spending every sweaty, tension-filled practice pretending we don’t want to kill each other—or kiss each other senseless.

Welcome to the Willow Ridge Country Club, where the paddles are savage, the gossip is hotter than July, and I’m in a pickle I definitely didn’t plan.

Tickle My Pickle by Lila Sloane

She’s chaos in crop tops. He’s a brooding board member with a paddle problem.
Welcome to Willow Ridge, where the courts are hot… and the chemistry is hotter

Junie Hart is the newest pickleball instructor at the country’s bougiest club—and she’s not exactly blending in. Between her bubblegum leggings, snack-fueled sass, and refusal to tone it down, she’s one walking HR violation away from being benched.

Weston Hale? He is the bench. Cold. Unsmiling. Uptight AF.
As a legacy board member, he’s all about rules, order, and keeping things PG. But when he’s assigned to mentor Junie after a wardrobe complaint (thanks, crop top), sparks fly—and not the good kind.

Until one fake-date kiss turns into a real, sweaty, can’t-stop-thinking-about-it situation
Now they’re sneaking kisses behind the bleachers, pretending they’re “just physical” (they’re not), and risking everything—his reputation, her career, and maybe their hearts.

If love is a game, these two are playing very dirty

Pickled Pink by Lila Sloane

A fake relationship, a forbidden crush, and one seriously scandalous paddle tournament…
Welcome back to Willow Ridge, where the drinks are strong, the skirts are short, and no one survives a fake-date plan unscathed

Emery Quinn is newly divorced, emotionally unavailable, and completely over love.
What she’s not over? Her ex flaunting his Barbie clone fiancée all over the country club.

Lachlan Maddox has dimples, discipline issues, and exactly one rule: no falling for best friend’s sisters.
Too bad Emery’s in heels and hell-bent on making her ex jealous.

They fake date.
They fake flirt.
Then they fake-make-out behind the Tiki Bar… and forget how to stop

Suddenly, it’s late-night practices, whispered confessions, and paddle-side tension hotter than a summer heatwave.
But when feelings sneak in through the back door—and the brother finds out—everything’s at risk.

Especially their hearts

Pickleball & Proposal by Nina Potter

A grumpy widow. A charming rogue. One fake engagement and a whole lot of scandal.

Sunshine Retirement Village is supposed to be relaxing… unless you’re Bev, a fiercely competitive widow with a killer pickleball serve. And especially if you’re stuck with Stan, a retired dance instructor who can’t resist a dramatic gesture.

When Dolly McGraw—self-appointed Activities Queen—announces a couples-only tournament, Bev and Stan fake an engagement to secure the last doubles slot. But as sparks fly on and off the court, their staged kisses might just turn into something real.

Add in nosy neighbors, a suspiciously romantic HOA rulebook, and one very public declaration, and the only thing more chaotic than the competition… might be falling in love.

Dolly McGraw says: “Never mix love and leisure sports, darling—unless you’re aiming for scandal, backhands, and maybe a diamond or two.”