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Sweet Dreams
Love Match
Joanna's a 15-year-old super-jock who's not quite ready to trade in her sneakers and sweatshirts for three-inch heels and designer jeans.Then she joins the boys' tennis team...meets Rick...and decides she enjoys being a girl!But Rick's the no. 1 player on the team...or at least he was until Joanna came along. Can they both play to win...without losing each other?
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
4 people are currently reading
332 people want to read
About the author
Janet Quin-Harkin
128 books76 followersJanet Quin-Harkin is a pseudonym of Rhys Bowen
Rhys turned to writing children’s books under her married name, Janet Quin-Harkin. Her first picture book was an immediate success and won several awards. More picture books followed, then her agent asked her to write a book for young adults. This was a turning point in Rhys’s career. Her first young adult novel was an instant hit. By her third she was selling half a million copies. Many more popular YA novels followed until Rhys decided she had said all she wanted to say about teenage love and angst, and she turned her real love—mysteries.
Rhys turned to writing children’s books under her married name, Janet Quin-Harkin. Her first picture book was an immediate success and won several awards. More picture books followed, then her agent asked her to write a book for young adults. This was a turning point in Rhys’s career. Her first young adult novel was an instant hit. By her third she was selling half a million copies. Many more popular YA novels followed until Rhys decided she had said all she wanted to say about teenage love and angst, and she turned her real love—mysteries.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 31, 2021
Ah, early 1980s Upper Midwestern tween girldom. As I recall, a most heteronormative and gender-binaried era in which - at least a full decade after the passing of Title IX - the the only two acknowledged fashion options for young women, as the book description spells out, were either “super-jock sweatshirts and sneakers” or “three-inch heels and designer jeans.” As the book clarifies, you never had any option but to “trade in” one for the other. Heaven forfend you attempt some sort of fusion, much less try to break out of the box altogether.
Well, screw that. I happily wore my sweatshirts WITH my pastel faux pearl necklaces until I got to high school and finally achieved liberation by starting to dress like Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux.
In any case - of all the Sweet Dreams books, this was one of the few covers we regarded with fashion suspicion. After all, we lived in a dingy working-class mill town blanketed in pre-global-warming snowfall, with its today-unfathomable lushness and longevity, for much of the year. We didn’t play fucking tennis or wear white, not ever. Who the hell were these people, showing up on the cover of our beloved teenybopper romances spinning on the rotating wire racks of the local strip mall BookStall? It was the reverse version of scaling a desert sand dune only to stumble into the Grand Slam of Curling.
Also, as elsewhere mentioned, what is with the extremely inappropriately close-talking young man here? Just because she looks saucy and tough and well capable of looking after herself doesn’t mean she’s consenting to be groped and panted upon by your preppy Izod tentacles and blowhole, sir. Back it the hell up! Geez, weren’t these books peddled to us at the school Scholastic Book Fairs??
That our generation was raised on this unacceptable pap is but one reason subsequent generations have had to hone their activist undoing-damage skills.
It’s also a crime this young man attempts to resemble a cut-rate brunette William Zabka. No.
(Part of a series in which I reflect on how my friend’s big sister’s Sweet Dreams books influenced my 80s Midwestern fashion desert clothing endeavors.)
Well, screw that. I happily wore my sweatshirts WITH my pastel faux pearl necklaces until I got to high school and finally achieved liberation by starting to dress like Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux.
In any case - of all the Sweet Dreams books, this was one of the few covers we regarded with fashion suspicion. After all, we lived in a dingy working-class mill town blanketed in pre-global-warming snowfall, with its today-unfathomable lushness and longevity, for much of the year. We didn’t play fucking tennis or wear white, not ever. Who the hell were these people, showing up on the cover of our beloved teenybopper romances spinning on the rotating wire racks of the local strip mall BookStall? It was the reverse version of scaling a desert sand dune only to stumble into the Grand Slam of Curling.
Also, as elsewhere mentioned, what is with the extremely inappropriately close-talking young man here? Just because she looks saucy and tough and well capable of looking after herself doesn’t mean she’s consenting to be groped and panted upon by your preppy Izod tentacles and blowhole, sir. Back it the hell up! Geez, weren’t these books peddled to us at the school Scholastic Book Fairs??
That our generation was raised on this unacceptable pap is but one reason subsequent generations have had to hone their activist undoing-damage skills.
It’s also a crime this young man attempts to resemble a cut-rate brunette William Zabka. No.
(Part of a series in which I reflect on how my friend’s big sister’s Sweet Dreams books influenced my 80s Midwestern fashion desert clothing endeavors.)
September 8, 2014
i love this book, read during school break and i like how it's a love story but not the gross kind
February 26, 2010
By Amazon reviewer Sweet Dreams Fan:
Smart and funny, "Love Match" is fast-paced, quick-witted, and thoroughly enjoyable. Spunky tomboy Joanna de Mayo narrates her funny tale of growing from a sports-crazed kid with no interest in boys into a competitive tennis star linked with popular jock and rival-turned-boyfriend Rick Hendricks. With humorous dialogue, exciting tennis sequences, plenty of comic relief-filled subplots, and just enough of a feminist edge, the novel both entertains and extols the virtues of hard work, sticking to one's convictions, and ultimately of learning to back away from those convictions in the spirit of compromise. Even the normally irritating youth flashback sequences are enjoyable in this upbeat, winning novel.
Janet Quin Harkin also writes murder mysteries under the name Rhys Bowen.
Smart and funny, "Love Match" is fast-paced, quick-witted, and thoroughly enjoyable. Spunky tomboy Joanna de Mayo narrates her funny tale of growing from a sports-crazed kid with no interest in boys into a competitive tennis star linked with popular jock and rival-turned-boyfriend Rick Hendricks. With humorous dialogue, exciting tennis sequences, plenty of comic relief-filled subplots, and just enough of a feminist edge, the novel both entertains and extols the virtues of hard work, sticking to one's convictions, and ultimately of learning to back away from those convictions in the spirit of compromise. Even the normally irritating youth flashback sequences are enjoyable in this upbeat, winning novel.
Janet Quin Harkin also writes murder mysteries under the name Rhys Bowen.
June 27, 2016
As far as these Sweet Dreams books go (when you read them as an adult), this one is pretty good. Janet Quin-Harkin always seemed to write the best ones. Likeable characters, good storyline, nice pace.
November 20, 2015
Eh. Couldn't help but wish that Rick was less of a whiney, pouty bitch.
December 17, 2015
aburridísimo
October 26, 2018
Of the many many Sweet Dreams books I read when I was a young teenager, this was my favourite. I'm sure it's still around here somewhere...I'll have to read it again to see if it's as funny as I remember.
August 12, 2018
A must read for every teenager!
August 29, 2021
54334
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January 14, 2022Read in French: 'Avantage Perdu'.
August 20, 2017
Okay - this is not my typical genre as an adult. But I read this book as a teen, and I reread it again and again. It was my first (maybe only) favorite in the romance genre.
High school loner and jock meets high school star and jock -- and falls for him. Then she.... :) not gonna give you any spoilers.
I want to read it again and see if it stands the test of time.
UPDATE:
I just found a used copy - and devoured it. Because this is more a growing up story than a romance, more a story about finding one's own strengths than first love ... and yet it is also first love romance in the sweetest sense.
The writing is good, the energy and story telling are engaging. If only life was still so simple and sweet as all this, not filled with teens sexting and cyber-bullying. Ach, well.
High school loner and jock meets high school star and jock -- and falls for him. Then she.... :) not gonna give you any spoilers.
I want to read it again and see if it stands the test of time.
UPDATE:
I just found a used copy - and devoured it. Because this is more a growing up story than a romance, more a story about finding one's own strengths than first love ... and yet it is also first love romance in the sweetest sense.
The writing is good, the energy and story telling are engaging. If only life was still so simple and sweet as all this, not filled with teens sexting and cyber-bullying. Ach, well.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews