Books That Deserved a Better Finish: Heavy Hitter and the Ball We All Missed

A little housekeeping: We’ve had a number of authors join us in recent days—which is thrilling. I want this space to welcome both readers and writers, and to make that possible, I’m putting a few light guidelines in place. If you’re an author subscribed here, I’ll always give you a heads-up before publishing anything that references your work. And I’ll keep any editions that mention you out of your inbox—it’ll be up to you to seek them out on my page.

You may also notice that I’ve turned on paid subscriptions, which is the only way to get ranked on Substack’s leaderboards (we hit #6 in rising fiction this week!). Some of you pledged support before I even asked (I do not deserve you)—but rest assured, everything will stay free for now.

Finally, starting next week - I’ll be publishing on Wednesdays.

Onwards!

Books That Deserved a Better Finish: Heavy Hitter and the Ball We All Missed

I don’t want to be here doing this today, recommending a book that most people seemed to hate. I never set out to be a contrarian, and I’m deeply nervous about holding this novel up to the light, wondering if I’ve missed something, if I’m going to lose my audience, if this whole Substack experiment will be over before it’s even begun.

But here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure I love this book.

If in writing last week’s piece on Annabel Monaghan, I wore out two highlighters, this time I didn’t even try. Every other line was a highlight, the whole thing might as well have been printed in neon orange.

I punished myself for liking this novel so much. I reread it three times, then once more with a chip on my shoulder, convinced it couldn’t be that good. Still unsure, I read every single Goodreads review (all 586). I figured enough lukewarm takes would cool me down, too. They didn’t.

Eventually, I gave in. Much like Jimmy Hodges in this book, I stopped trying to be anything other than what I was—in my case, an unabashed, unapologetic uber-fan of what everyone else seems to think is Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce fanfic…but I remain convinced is just a really great fucking book.

In Heavy Hitter, Katie Cotugno so effectively writes us into the head of Lacey Logan, a thinly veiled Taylor Swift, that you start to wonder what it would be like to live that way. More product than person. Known of by millions, but known to by almost none.

Lacey is, by turns, high-maintenance, grasping, smug, and downright crude—and not in a way that winks at you and asks to be found cute. At times, she’s deeply unlikeable, which feels radical for a romance novel.

Cotugno says as much herself. She ends a passage describing Lacey’s fortress of a home—thermostat set to 69.5 degrees, blinds open at a precise angle, fridge stocked just so, with this declaration:

Lacey has never been exactly what one might call … popular. With actual people. In her actual life.

These aren’t the kinds of details we’re taught to admire in a protagonist, they’re the shorthand most authors use to signal a villain. Think Miranda Priestly, Claire Underwood, Margot Channing. Cotugno paints Lacey with the same brush, and then asks you to root for her anyway.

There’s no tragic backstory to explain Lacey’s control, no sudden softness to redeem it. Lacey isn’t performing likability, and Cotugno doesn’t smooth her out. Instead, she leaves you with the discomfort of a woman who is powerful, a little insufferable, and profoundly alone. The dare is quiet but clear: can you care about a character who doesn’t need your approval?

Jimmy Hodges, the aging baseball star, isn’t much of a heartthrob himself: “a thirty-seven-year-old has-been catcher with knees like hamburger and twenty extra pounds in the gut.” He sits in “a recycling bin of ice for half an hour every morning” and greets most days with “every single one of his joints on white-hot fire.” Chapter after chapter, you feel the exhaustion in Jimmy’s bones, the ache of a body limping toward the end of a storied career, unsure what comes next.

But his broken body is a minor-league offense compared to his outdated endearments and snide bewilderment at Lacey’s success. He calls her everything from “cupcake” to “princess” and more. He describes her as “a pop singer who undoubtedly owns a small and annoying dog and captions her Instagram photos with phrases like all the feels.” He describes her as “the benevolent dictator of a densely populated nation comprised entirely of screaming girls.” He’s not oblivious—he admits she’s “objectively the most successful person” he’s ever met—but he remains stubbornly unimpressed by the spectacle of Lacey Logan. 

There’s a moment when Lacey tries to explain to Jimmy what he means to her—how different this feels from everything that came before—and his reaction to the whole monologue is a flat, unapologetic: “I have no idea what that means.” Nor does he care. Not enough to ask a follow-up, not enough to pantomime a response. Just not at all.

And there’s no redemptive arc coming for him: Cotugno, refusing to steer toward a softer, self-actualized Jimmy, lets him remain who he is—all the way through.

Which challenges the reader to sit with what comes next: Jimmy’s the hero we’re getting. He’s what’s in store for Lacey. He can like her, want her, even love her, without decoding every emotional nuance she offers. He’s not a fantasy of emotional labor—just a man, flawed and real and reaching. Somehow, that’s enough.

And their love isn’t a fantasy either. Cotugno staunchly refuses to give the reader the sugar high they might be chasing. Jimmy doesn’t narrate love; he performs it. Midway through the novel, Lacey’s fame demands a sacrifice: a mid-season, cross-country trip for optics. “Is that a huge pain in the balls for you?” she asks.

“I mean,” Jimmy said mildly, and Lacey could hear the shrug in his voice clear across the country. “Does it matter?”

It is a pain. But Jimmy gets on the damn plane anyway.

Later, after a fight, they don’t reunite with grand speeches or fervent I love you’s. Instead, Lacey, one high-performance professional to another, talks Jimmy down from a panic attack. It’s quiet. Human. True.

And this, all of it, is deeply realistic in a way that outright romances the reader. The realism flattens the distance between character and audience.

If Lacey Logan—global pop star—is demanding and occasionally uninteresting to her partner, and yet still loved… if Jimmy Hodges—washed-up and rough around the edges—is still wanted by a woman who could have anyone… then what does that say to the reader?

It says: maybe your own love doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth something. Maybe your partner can be tired, and flawed, and say the wrong thing, and still be the right person. 

Too often, romance novels paint character flaws like they’re answering the cliched job interview question: what’s your greatest weakness? The acceptable answers all some variation on a theme: “I care too much,” or “I work too hard.” Translated to books, the heroine is messy, but adorably so. The hero is emotionally stunted, but only because he’s afraid to overwhelm her with how deeply he feels. Just like in the interview, the flaws are strengths in disguise. 

Not here. There’s no lipstick on this pig. And stripped of it, these characters and their love start to resemble our own relationships—the ones we’ve judged, overlooked, or taken for granted. Cotugno invites us to look again. And maybe this time, locate love in our own lives more easily. 

Cotugno’s restraint isn’t limited to her characters, it extends to the scaffolding of the novel itself. The architecture is spare, almost skeletal, with scenes that echo more than they explain. Since so much of Lacey and Jimmy’s relationship unfolds in transit, in hotels, or over hours long phone calls, Cotugno frees herself from the burden of elaborate scene work. Why bother? One hotel bed is just like another. That’s the point.

And when Cotugno does decide to mete out more words than necessary, she makes them sing. Not because she’s showing off, but because she knows what a surplus of language can do when it’s used like a match instead of a floodlight. This description of Jimmy hitting a home run sprints on as long as he does, but wastes nary a word:

He hits one, actually.

He thinks about her as soon as the bat connects, her dark hair and soft neck and quick, brilliant smile. He knows the ball is gone before he even starts to run. Jimmy hauls ass anyway, the adrenaline coursing through his whole body quick and sleek and painless and the din of the crowd echoing in his head; when he finally slides home, covered in dust and sweat and bruises, for a moment the glare of the sun makes it too bright to see.

If I have one nit to pick, it’s that I wish Cotugno hadn’t been quite so economical. I felt it in three places: the relationship starts a little too fast, the chemistry outpacing the emotional depth that follows; the ending rushes from Jimmy’s revelation—“He feels abruptly certain of what he wants, here in this kitchen. He feels suddenly sure”—to a resolution that comes too quickly to savor; and finally, I wanted more time with them together in person, something Lacey herself echoes: “How is it possible this is only the third time they’ve been together in person?”.

Cotugno’s made you believe so deeply in their love; you just wish you could linger in it a little longer.

But really, that’s the worst thing I can say about this book: I wanted more of it.

Well, that—and the cover. All pop colors and cartoon figures, it courted readers looking for Taylor Swift fanfic, then tried to convince them they deserved better. I’m not sure that was the winning strategy. 

Heavy Hitter feels to me, at its core, to be a book about performance—about what it costs to live under constant scrutiny, to be consumed as content rather than understood as a person. Ironically, that’s exactly what happened to the book itself. It was flattened into content; packaged as internet candy. 

But the thing is, this isn’t fanfic. It’s a novel. One that’s smarter, sharper, and more skillfully written than it had any obligation to be. And I think you should probably read it.

PS: The good news? Heavy Hitter is free on Kindle Unlimited right now. But if you’ve got a few bucks to spare, the paperback’s a deal too—$10.71 new, or $1.50 used while they last. Read it however makes the most sense for your budget.

That said… I do have a dream.

A quiet pile of us all buy the paperback. Katie Cotugno wakes up tomorrow to a surprise bump in sales. And for one small, sweet second, we get to think: Smart Romance-ers did that.

We’re nearly a thousand strong (!!!), and the idea that we could move the needle together feels a little less like a pipe dream every day.

And honestly—how cool is that?

Image Credit: cover image courtesy of the incredibly talented MaryChaseWrites