Author Ilana Long has released her second pickleball romance novel, Pickle Perfect.

A standalone release, it takes a few characters briefly mentioned in her first pickleball novel, Pickleballers, and explores their love story. 

“Pickle Perfect is a second chance, rivals-to-lovers romantic comedy,” shared Long, during an exclusive interview with Pickleball.com. “It’s about a single mom who goes on this adventurous, tropical pickleball vacation in Costa Rica only to find that her ex-boyfriend, who is now the “bad boy” of pickleball, is the tour’s pro for the week.”

Tropical location, pickleball, and romance? Okay, I’m sold.  

“Their history is that they played tennis together. He went on to become a professional, and she went on to become a single mother and went on to live a very different life,” revealed Long. “A second-chance romance is when you go back to someone that you’ve already had a romance with, so it was a lot of fun to write their story.”

Long has a comedy background, so of course we can expect all kinds of humor from start to finish - but there's some heat as well. Long confirmed that Pickle Perfect is about a 2 out of 5 on the chili pepper scale. Not fade to black, but expect some steam.

While writing Pickleballers, did Long ever envision writing a second book exploring these other minor characters?

“I did have it in mind,” she said.

Long was inspired by Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novels where she mentions characters from her other novels like it’s one interconnected world of characters. 

After writing her first pickleball romance, she has seen the continued popularity of a pickleball court being an ideal location for a love story. 

“Pickleball is so social. It’s the perfect romance book setting. In pickleball, there’s a lot of banter. When you’re playing, it’s easy to connect because you’re doing something that you have to do together. Every step is like choreography, so there’s just a lot of opportunity for togetherness and romance in a situation like that,” said Long. “Pickleball is becoming a romantic opportunity for people. The biggest group of pickleball players are 18 to 30-year-olds, and that’s the biggest group of readers of romantic comedy as well, so it’s a great overlap. I think people are beginning to realize that pickleball is something that’s really up and coming. Just look at the pros, they’re not retirees.”

And speaking of the pros, Anna Leigh Waters is also mentioned in the book, but I guess we’ll have to read it to see when she makes an appearance. 

Pickle Perfect is available on Ilanalong.com, Amazon, or anywhere books are sold. 

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