Review: "A Sharp Endless Need" by Marisa Crane

 

A Sharp Endless Need by Marisa Crane
Published May 2025 via The Dial Press
★★★

It was as if we'd been playing together our entire lives. We didn't even have to say anything; we knew when the other's blood was hot with fury. We were alone together; we were a crowd all our own. We were ethereal; we were of the world. We were untouchable; we were touching each other all the time, with every pass, every play, every time-out, every steal. (loc. 1339*)

Another time and another place: When Mack and Liv meet, it's an instant connection. They're both basketball players with Division I dreams and the skills to back it up. The air sizzles between them, on and off the court. But: It's a different time. Liv has a boyfriend; heterosexuality is the only option that has ever been modelled for them; Mack, too, is unwilling to take that first step out of bounds.

This is set in 2004, putting Mack in her last year of high school around the same time I was in mine (though I was a sports-averse nerd, and Mack sees college primarily as a vehicle to play basketball at a higher level). The year is there in the details: Mack and her mother share a flip phone; communication via AIM (or AIM away status) is the norm; social media isn't yet a thing, but word gets around anyway. Word always gets around.

For whatever reason, most of the basketball books I've read have been about queer girls figuring it out. This reminds me strongly of Nina Revoyr's The Necessary Hunger, which remains one of the best queer-girls-figuring-it-out books I know and also features characters whose lives revolve around the next basket. Different settings, different time periods, different plots, of course. But both of them with this push-pull of will they and won't they and how much does it cost to put yourself forward, to be open about want.

There are a few things here that I'm still puzzling over after finishing the book (what was up with Liv's father? And the end—where does that leave them, both individually and together?), and I think I might have liked a slower timeline—Mack and Liv have one of those teenage relationships (platonic/romantic/sexual, doesn't matter) that burns so bright and so fast that it's clear that something will have to give—but this makes for a dynamic coming-of-age story.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.