What a great story! Maggie, the sports photographer for the Chicago Cougars baseball team gets snapped by a paparazzi coming out of a club with the Cougars hot new signing - Tommy. The club's PR gurus stage a fake relationship and you guess the rest.
You get both perspectives of the story - Maggie and Tommy - both are sensitive and caring. Maggie has suffered a sad loss which has made her a bit of a hermit and Tommy has been hurt in previous relationships by women only wanting his money. Love the happy ending & thanks to Net Galley for the advanced copy.

What a fun read with just enough pages to suck you in but also short enough to bump up your read goal!

If this is Ally Wiegand’s debut novel and the first of a series… sign me up!

Read Time ⏱️ 2.5 hours
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"Just because this isn't real doesn't mean I can't still treat you right."

“It was bad enough that I was having to pretend to date the hottest guy I'd ever seen. It was even worse that the hottest guy I'd ever seen had kissed me like I was water and he had been stranded in the desert for the past month. If Tommy was going to kiss me like that every time we had to in public, I was sure my feelings would forever be fucked.”

"I don't think it's possible for me to want you any more than I do now… But I know I'll wake up tomorrow and prove myself wrong."

Sadly, this book wasn't for me. the writing was a bit odd, explaining too much, more show than tell, I also didn't enjoy then instant connection the two main characters had, Maggie swooning over him at first glance and Tommy ready to let all his promises to himself go for this girl who wasn't like any other he'd ever met. Not for me I'm afraid, but thank you netgalley for sending me an ARC.

Thank you NetGally and Embla Books for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

At the height of my sav bananas bananas obsession, i came across this baseball romance to request and knew it was meant to be. I was so thrilled to have been accepted for this!

i want to say, i enjoyed this book - it did it's job as a fluffy book to fill a gap on my reading goal, will i be continuing the series? probably not.some parts for me felt rushed and confusing and after about 30% of the book, i just didn't care as much as when i first started.

maggie was annoying, i couldn't connect to her well and the third act break up was just so predictable, i know some plots get repeated, but i wanted some authenticity with it - i liked tommy but again he was just a very mid character.

the slow burn, wasn't that much of a slow burn but i enjoyed the fake dating aspect and the guy falls first. i was smiling at their little dates and enjoyed those.

it was a good book - but some parts just lacked authenticity and i wanted to feel like i wasn't just reading another same old same old story!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 🌶️0.5

Who doesn’t love a baseball romance? I really enjoyed ‘First Base’. For a debut novel Ally Wiegand really knocked it out of the park… a real home run ( no more puns I promise)

⚾️ Fake dating
⚾️ Opposites attract
⚾️Forced proximity

Maggie is the Chicago Cougars photographer and Tommy is the new player in town, what could go wrong?

Maggie is learning to trust and love after losing her first love and Tommy is a recently reformed player, these opposites do however attract.

I enjoyed the character dynamics between Maggie, Olivia and the rest of the team and thoroughly the progression of Maggie and Tommy blurring the lines of their fake romance.

I cannot wait to read the next book in the Chicago Heartbreakers series.

This romance hits all the bases and ends in a home run.

Maggie is a photographer for Baseball team the Cougars who ends up on the other side of the camera after being caught leaving a club with their new signing, Tommy. What follows is a classic fake dating story where lines become blurred between what’s fake and what becomes real.

Not only are all the much loved romance tropes included here, there is also some fantastic backstory for the two main characters that gives them a lot of added depth.

My only criticism is the book felt quite short and I would’ve liked to have seen more details in some places.

Thank you NetGalley and Embla Books for the arc.

Photographer Maggie Redford is happy to watch life from the stands. She's already met and lost the love of her life and would rather spend her time snapping shots of Chicago's MLB team. But Maggie's thrown a curveball when the team signs Tommy Mikals, a tattooed hotshot whose talent for making plays is matched by a playboy reputation. He's put his Baseball career as priority with a vow of celibacy for his shot at redemption.

- Fake Dating
- Dual POV
- Sports Romance (Baseball)
- Baseball Player x Sports Photographer
- Life After Loss ( TW: Grief)
- Slow Burn

Baseball isn't typically my first choice when it comes to sports romance but I'm actually starting to really enjoy them. This is a Debut from the author and I really enjoyed it. I will be looking out for and reading the rest of the books in the Chicago Heartbreakers series.
This is a heartwarming story of life after loss, life after you've made a lot of mistakes and taking the second chances at life with two hands. This book made me smile, laugh and cry with sadness and happiness.

I just could not put it down, I read it within a day. Even when cooking dinner I had this book with me.
The epilogue brought me smiles and happy tears, I wish it was longer but it did what it needed to.

This wasn't for me, unfortunately. I found the writing too descriptive and explaining every thought the characters had. I also struggled with the instant connection they had, and Tommy immediately explaining that she wasn't like other girls and that she was unlike any woman he had ever met.

The dual POV didn't add a lot of interest for me and I think it would have read better just from Maggie's POV.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A heartfelt debut by Ally Wiegand about healing from grief, guilt and regret First Base tugged at my emotions thanks to two compelling characters.

Chicago Cougers photographer Maggie Redford is forced to fake date hotshot transfer Tommy Mikals, after an innocent photo of him escorting her home from a nightclub goes viral. Tommy is on a second chance after his youthful mistakes got him transferred from his old team, while Maggie has been living a shadow of a life for four years after her fiance died.

There's insta attraction, but it's well-written and the story carefully develops it with so much layer and depth as Maggie slowly lets go of her grief. Too often writers mistakenly go to love and too many sex scenes without showing any real moments of genuine connection between these characters. This is where First Base gets it right. Maggie fights her attraction due to her grief and guilt, and Tommy knows she has a lot of walls up but at every step he's quietly there for her, as she is for him with his own issues. There's many little moments that I commend Ally Wiegand for.

For me, the team machinating a fake dating agreement was the weakest part of the book, as I find it hard to believe the egeneral public would care that much about who he dates. Tommy was transferred for dating a lot of women, yet he'd settled down with his ex-girlfriend anyway. I also find it unbelievable the amount of paparazzi following Tommy and that Maggie's late fiance reveal was newsworthy. But the big thing that took me out of the story was Maggie plugging in her cameras (not batteries, camera) after the game to go out with Tommy without editing and submitting her photos to the social media team!

In spite of those minor issues, overall this was a wonderful debut and I look forward to the next book in the series, because I believe this is one of the stronger sports romances out there.

Thanks to Embla and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was cute but I didn't love it.

It was the sort of book that I just read to see what happened - I enjoyed the writing style but I just didn't care for the characters and wasn't really invested.

This was definitely a book that would have got a higher rating if I'd reviewed based on the blurb alone.

That being said, I would read this author again!

A solid debut from newcomer Ally Wiegand.

First Base tells the story of Maggie and Tommy, two characters who in their own ways are trying to heal from past traumas and mistakes. We see the two characters come together and help and encourage each other, and it was really beautiful to see their relationship develop over the course of the book.

This book takes place over such a short space of time, even the characters remark how they find it astounding how in love and infatuated they are having only known each other for about a week. Yet, despite this, the book somehow managed to avoid feeling insta-lovey. I could believe how they fell for each other so quickly. However, I wouldn't have minded this book being a bit longer so we could've had a bit more development on that front, but all in all it really did not ruin my enjoyment of the story.

This story was unexpectedly very emotional - I cried a minimum of three times! I really loved how we got to see Maggie work her way through her guilt and her grief, and how none of the characters - especially Tommy - pushed her to do something she wasn't ready to do. I love how the book made way for her feelings, even if what she was feeling wasn't "right".

I felt a bit less attached to Tommy - I think his issues could have been explored a bit more, I feel this was really Maggie's book, despite the fact that we also had his perspective. I think he was a very sweet love interest.

There was sort of a third act break up that lasted for a short few pages to add the final conflict and I really think it could have done with out it. I did begin to pre-empt it was coming and I was dismayed when it did. For a book that had some really good communication and avoided the whole trope of misunderstanding something, it was disappointing to see it go that way. It did knock my enjoyment of the book down.

Overall, I think this was a really great debut novel from Wiegand and I anticipate good things from her in the future and I'm excited to see where she takes this as a series.