About Heart Racer: The Love Hypothesis meets Heated Rivalry in this spicy, dual-pov, academic rivals rom com – as nerdy as it is sure to raise your pulse… Released April 23rd 2026.

If given an inch to recommend a book, I’ll fill an entire mile with books I’ve read and loved. From recent reads to long-standing favorites, this list will explore my favorite sports and STEM romances, as well as a few genre-blending recs for those who refuse to choose! (Spoiler Alert: there is a lot of rivals to lovers here. I learned something new about myself today.)

Sports Romance

Always Only You by Chloe Liese

One of my all-time favorites! A friends-to-lovers romance between a hockey player and the team’s social media manager, with beautiful #OwnVoices chronic illness and autism representation.

Thirty Love by Tom Vellner

Rival tennis players go head-to-head, with beautiful, tender moments sewn into banter that had me laughing out loud. This is for everyone still searching for something to scratch the Heated Rivalry itch.

Ready to Score by Jodie Slaughter

A small-town, sapphic romance about rival teachers competing for the same assistant football coaching slot, determined to ignore the sparks between them. They fail miserably; there’s a bar bathroom scene that lives in my head rent-free.

The Cheat Sheet by Sarah Adams

A heartwarming fake-dating romance between a dance teacher and her best friend, who also happens to be an NFL quarterback. The grand gesture in this book is in my hall of fame. This one is closed-door, for readers who prefer less spice!

STEMinist Romance

A Little Buzzed by Alys Murray

A virgin sex toy engineer meets her match in her company’s new software developer, who’s never used a sex toy. Naturally, the only option is to team up and figure out the kinks of their company’s newest product. For research. Warning: contents may cause your e-reader to overheat.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

A modern classic, in my humble opinion. An econometrician hires a male escort to practice physical intimacy. She’s smart, he’s smitten, I’m in love.

The Geographer’s Map to Romance by India Holton

A historical fantasy romance that features a marriage in crisis between two, you guessed it, geographers. They’re tasked with tracking and disarming a magical storm, thrusting (wink) them into forced proximity that requires them to figure out where their marriage fell apart.

The Love Simulation by Etta Easton

For anyone obsessed with Artemis II this month. A vice principal and her nemesis, the school’s hot science teacher, team up for a Mars simulation to win a scholarship for their school. BIPOC leads, forced proximity, and a hilarious supporting cast.

Why Choose (Sports x STEM Romance)

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

Queen Ali broke ground when she combined the best of both worlds in this new adult romance. A collegiate diver and swim captain work together in the lab for an internship, and in the bedroom to safely explore complementary kinks.

Collide by Bal Khabra

A new adult romance where a hopeful sports psychologist and a star hockey player team up on a research project that stretches the confines of “enemies to lovers.” Devoured in a day!

Heart Racer by Megan Avery (that’s me!)

Biochemistry major Keely and champion sprinter Max turn rivals when competing for the last spot on a post-grad scholarship that will make or break not only their futures, but their hearts. Found family, forced proximity, and small-town vibes make this the perfect spring read (in my humble opinion).

Top of My TBR

The Greatest Game by Tara Sexton

A soccer coach has to win the championship or lose her job, which would be hard enough if the rival school didn’t hire the hottest man she’s ever seen, an ex-pro from England.

Crash into You by Simone Soltani

Aforbidden love story between a star F1 driver and his rival’s daughter, made all the more complicated after their one-night stand turns into an unexpected pregnancy.

Unrivaled by Rachel Reid

If you haven’t heard of Heated Rivalry yet, I’m going to need your screen time management strategy, please and thank you.

Will you be picking up any of these books? Have you already? Tell us in the comments below!

The post The Ultimate Why Choose: Sports and STEM Romance Recommendations appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from A Little Buzzed by Alys Murray, which releases on February 17th 2026.

If she builds it, they will come.

Scout Porter is screwed. Not literally, of course. Literally, she’s a twenty-six-year-old virgin, thanks to a relationship so disastrous she swore off love and sex for good. Metaphorically, she’s screwed because the entire office of BuzzCorp, the sex toy start-up where she’s head engineer, just found out. Scout needs her team to stay focused on their upcoming launch, not her lack of a sex life, so she finds the simplest solution: lose her V-card—and fast—then get back to business as usual.

Enter Hudson Bailey, the nerdy and charming software developer hired to build the app for Scout’s latest creation. The only problem is, he’s as inexperienced with sex toys as she is with sex. Fortunately, he’s all too eager to learn, and they agree that one very educational, totally professional hook-up will solve both of their problems. All for research, obviously.

But their little experiment yields unexpected results—chemistry so off the charts Scout starts to think she might actually want more than just a one-time fling. When their budding relationship is threatened by the return of Scout’s notorious ex, both Scout and Hudson will have to decide if they’ve reached their climax as a couple, or if they’re willing to risk everything for a chance at true love.

EXCERPT

Hudson Bailey, a software engineer with zero experience with sex toys who just got hired at a sex toy company, walks in on the company’s chief engineer, Scout Porter, looking through an online dating website. The entire office just found out she’s a virgin, and she’s very keen to fix that little problem…As soon as possible. But choosing a partner is difficult when Hudson is the only one she really wants.

“And what is your type, Scout?”

Oh, no. I shouldn’t have brought up the type thing. I idly picked at a stray thread dangling from the cuff of my cardigan sleeve. Anything to avoid telling him the truth. That I didn’t want any of these guys because they weren’t him. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Don’t overanalyze it. It’s that zing. What guy makes you zing?”

               I don’t know how to answer that without totally giving myself away, dude. And I can’t give myself away. Not to you.

He tried again. “Or maybe this: when you’ve imagined what sex would be like – real sex, good sex, the sex you’ve wished for – what’s that guy like?”

Say something. Say anything. Just don’t say, he’s exactly like you. “Um. Tall.”

“Pity for the short kings out there, but at least it’s a start.”

Hand back on my mouse, I scrolled down the seemingly endless pages of dating profiles, mostly for something to do. But the longer I talked, the longer the partialism of it all – shirtless torsos, crinkle-eyed stares, buzz-cut heads – spiraled me into something like a trance. Before I knew it, I was doing that nervous talking of mine. The one where I said entirely the wrong thing.

The truth.

“And gentle. And thoughtful. And maybe like he wouldn’t necessarily beat me in a fight – you know, a little softer or lankier or whatever. None of those big burly types. Curly hair. Long fingers, nice hands. And he’d smell good – really good. He’d be able to talk to me about stuff that wasn’t sex. Science or math or philosophy or the last museum he went to.  But he can’t be too serious. He needs to be able to have fun, too. A nice laugh. A good smile. Looks good in a pair of jeans. Bookish. Nerdy. Kind eyes – I don’t care about the color. I like glasses. And…”

I trailed off, the weight of one particular set of kind, bespectacled eyes bringing me back to reality. Closing the tab on my screen, I stood up from my chair and leaned against my desk to face him.

“And I want him to care about me. When I do have sex for the first time, I don’t want anonymous. I probably should. It’d be safer. Less risky. Easier to wham, bam, thank you m’am. But I want to be with someone who actually likes me. I don’t need forever. Just a one-night stand. But still. I want to feel safe. To know that it’ll be good.”

For a few moments, all we heard was the whir of the 3-D printer as it went about its work.

“Quite the Mr. Right,” Hudson mused.

“Don’t make fun. I’m fully aware that it’s ridiculous.”

“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say…”

As he trailed off, something strange happened. Something absolutely baffling. Hudson raised one perfect hand, ghosted the tips of his fingers up my knee, and lightly, almost incidentally, traced the hem of my skirt.

My entire body erupted in goosebumps. I licked my lips involuntarily.

Was he…was he touching me on purpose?

“Say what?” I prompted.

Hudson glanced up at me from under his eyelashes. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn he looked…hungry. “Your dream man sounds a lot like me.”

I’m not sure how I managed to concentrate with his fingers dancing across my knee.

But somehow, a snap plan occurred to me.

Problem: Need to lose my virginity.

Proposed Solution: Find someone to have safe, emotionally unattached sex with.

Test: Have sex with Hudson.

Result: Some potentially amazing virginity-losing shenanigans?

“I have an idea,” I said, breathless.

“Yeah?”

“Would you…How would you feel about a trade?”

His fingers paused on my knee. “I’m listening.”

“If you still want those sex toy lessons, then I’ll give them to you. And in exchange, we should have sex.”

The air between us pulled – a bridge jumper’s cable about to snap and break our necks or rebound and send us soaring.

Hudson let out a long breath. His expression turned wolfish. “I think that’s a fair trade.”

“It only makes sense,” I said, trying to tamp down my swell of sentiment with good, old-fashioned practical, scientific thinking. “I’ll get to know what sex is like, which can only improve the quality of The Fantasy. And you’ll know more about sex toys, which will achieve the same result.”

“You don’t need an excuse to do what you want, Scout,” he said, leaning closer. “You can just have it. You can just have me. If that’s what you want.”

“I do.”

“Good,” he said. Once again, those fingers did their dance across the skin of my thigh, awakening deep, primal lust in me. “Because I want you. You’re my type, too.”

“That’s so hard to believe,” I muttered.

Hudson’s gaze flattened, as if it was the height of stupidity not to think I was eminently bang-able. “Haven’t I made it obvious?”

Obvious. I tried to think back over the last few weeks we’d known each other, examining them in a different light. Yeah, he held doors open for me. Gotten me cookies at the conference. Listened to me. Stood up for me at the airport. Accidentally kissed me.

And yes, sure, he’d gotten an erection during my talk at the sex toy convention. But that wasn’t…

He wasn’t…

My surprise made him shake his head.

“You clearly don’t know what you look like bent over a drafting table.”

He’d been ogling me in the office? He’d been lusting after me from afar like Mr. Kinkz-william Darcy?

“And,” he continued, “that kiss at the airport might not have been on purpose, but ever since, I’ve had a very hard time thinking about anything else.”

Wow. Maybe the Lloyd thing messed me up more than I originally thought. Had I really gotten so bad at realizing when someone was into me?

Or had I just been hiding from it?

Well. No more.

“Prove it,” I challenged.

“Gladly.”

In a single bound, he stood, captured my cheeks with his big hands, and breathed in my surprised gasp as our lips touched.

Excerpted from A Little Buzzed by Alys Murray Copyright © 2026 by Alys Murray. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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