It’s the start of a new century, the twentieth, in Iowa and Emily Graham is not just a suffragist, she’s the president of the Lake Manawa Suffragist Society. She has one goal and one focus–getting women the right to vote. Her aunts, on the other hand, are equally determined to find Emily a husband.

Just when Emily manages to discourage her aunts meddling by accidentally knocking the latest suitor unconscious during an unfortunate game of horseshoes, she finds herself caught off guard by the handsome Carter Stockton.

Carter Stockton has only the summer left to play baseball. He’s the starting pitcher for that Manawa Owls, but come fall his father expects him to take his place in the family business. And if the Owls can’t maintain a winning record, his father may demand he give up the game even sooner. He doesn’t need any distractions. But Emily Graham is more than a distraction. She’s a line drive that he can’t escape.

When an opportunity arises for the Owls to get unprecedented publicity and for the Suffragists Society to make an undeniable statement for women’s rights, Emily and Carter find that their paths are entwined. If they can work together, they might get everything they are hoping for…and a whole lot more.

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If you haven’t guessed, this was one of my palate cleansers that I mentioned a few weeks back. It did its job. It was cute, sweet, and gloriously innocent.

The romance between Carter and Emily is not a slow burn, which isn’t always common among clean reads. Their feelings for one another develop quickly, but being that they are both from upper echelon families in 1901, they must move slowly because propriety demands it. So there is still a push and pull that is fun to see. But it’s not a perfect story.

I love baseball and period pieces, so this was right up my alley. While the baseball scenes didn’t always feel accurate, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t get over or chalk up to turn of the century minor league nuances. While I have a deep love for baseball, I’m certainly not a baseball historian. I tried not to stop and look up facts while I was reading. That helped too.

There is a line about Carter being able to wrap his hands around Emily’s waist and his fingers meeting in the back. That disturbed me because I’m having trouble picturing a woman that thin being healthy. There are a couple of lines like this in the story that make me cringe. Can we please stop judging a woman’s beauty by how “impossibly small” her waist is?

I was also not impressed with the villain’s rationale. He’s willing to kill one threat to his plan, but not another. This is a little too convenient for me. It didn’t feel very well planned out.

There is also zero diversity in this book. The entire cast is upper-class white people.

If you can get past those things, it’s a cute book. If any of those sound like deal breakers to you, skip it.