The Open Era by Edward Schmit Review - A Queer Tennis Romance That Aces Every Shot
Opening Hook
There is something about sports romance that hits different when you can feel the author's genuine love for the game. Not just the love for the romance — that's expected — but the love for the sport itself, for its rhythms and rituals and the specific kind of pressure it places on the human body and mind. The best sports romances make you feel the competition as viscerally as the love story. They make you understand why someone would give their life to a pursuit that is, at its core, about control and the perpetual, terrifying loss of it.
The Open Era by Edward Schmit is that kind of book. And it is extraordinary.
This is a debut novel, which makes what Schmit has accomplished here even more remarkable. He has written a queer romance set in the world of professional tennis that is simultaneously a portrait of anxiety and performance, a study in the specific loneliness of elite athleticism, and a love story that unfolds with the slow, exquisite tension of a fifth-set tiebreak. By the time you reach the final pages, you'll find yourself holding your breath in a way that has very little to do with whether anyone wins or loses a match.
The Open Era is the kind of debut that makes you feel like you discovered something before the rest of the world caught up. That feeling won't last long — this book is already making waves, and it deserves every bit of the attention it's about to receive. If you love queer romance, if you love sports narrative, if you love books that have real stakes and real beauty and real things to say about what it costs a person to be seen — this is the book for you, and the time to read it is right now.
What This Book Is About
Marcus has been out since he was twenty-three — long enough that being gay feels like a settled fact of his identity, something he carries without particular drama. What doesn't feel settled is his tennis. At thirty-one, Marcus is a top-twenty player, respected and experienced, and about to become the first openly gay man to compete in a Grand Slam. He has been careful and deliberate about this moment. He has thought about what it means. He believes he is ready.
He is not ready for the panic attack on the practice court the day before the draw ceremony. He is not ready to lose his footing on the red clay and twist his ankle, badly, in front of a crowd of journalists and photographers and Nikolai Petrov, ranked number two in the world and the man he's been quietly watching for two years.
Nikolai is complicated in ways that take time to fully emerge. He is Russian, out only to those close to him, navigating the particular pressures of a career and a national identity that have made his private life an elaborate management exercise. He is also, beneath all of that management, a person of genuine warmth and a kind of careful attentiveness to others that Marcus finds simultaneously disarming and dangerous. When Nikolai helps him off the court, it's a simple act of human decency. When he stays — when, over the following days and weeks at the US Open, he keeps finding reasons to be in Marcus's orbit — something starts to build that neither of them entirely knows what to do with.
The novel follows Marcus and Nikolai through the tournament and beyond, through the competing rhythms of competition and connection, through the specific difficulty of finding privacy in the most public arena imaginable. What makes it remarkable is that Schmit refuses to simplify either man or the situation they're in. Marcus has done the visible work of being out, and he is no more free of fear than Nikolai. Nikolai is not in the closet out of shame — he's navigating a genuinely complex set of pressures — and the novel treats this complexity with full respect and intelligence.
Author's Style and Craft
Edward Schmit writes with a control and economy that would be impressive in any novelist and is frankly astonishing in a debut. His prose is clean and propulsive in the action sequences — the tennis matches are genuinely gripping, rendered with technical precision that never tips into inaccessibility — and more lyrical and interior in the quieter moments. He knows how to shift registers, which is one of the harder skills for a fiction writer to develop.
His tennis knowledge is clearly genuine and deep. The specificity of the sport — the way it lives in the body, the mental game that runs parallel to the physical one, the relationship between a player and their service game when the pressure is at its highest — all of this is written with an authority and a love that enriches every scene. You don't need to be a tennis fan to love this book, but if you are, you will find it deeply satisfying.
Most impressively, Schmit has written two male protagonists who feel genuinely distinct and fully realised. Marcus and Nikolai are not just archetypes in opposition to each other — the out one and the private one, the older and the younger, the American and the Russian. They are specific people with specific histories, and the novel traces those specificities with care.
Themes and Deeper Meaning
The Open Era is, at its deepest level, a novel about visibility — about what it costs and what it means, about the difference between being seen and being exposed, about how we choose who gets to know us fully and what happens when that choice is taken away.
Marcus has made peace with public visibility. He has lived through the process of deciding to be seen, and he has reached a kind of equanimity about it. What the novel reveals, with beautiful slow precision, is that being willing to be visible is not the same as being willing to be known. The distinction is everything. Marcus can stand in front of cameras. He can represent something larger than himself. What he hasn't let himself do, fully, in a very long time, is let someone else in — not past the public persona, not into the real person underneath.
Nikolai's journey runs beautifully parallel to this. His privacy is not repression. It is self-preservation in a specific context, and Schmit takes care to make this clear. But self-preservation, even when necessary, has its costs. And the question the novel asks — can you build something real with someone when you're still deciding how much of yourself you're willing to risk? — is one that extends far beyond the question of being gay or closeted. It's a question about love in general.
There's also a gorgeous thread about aging in sport — about what it means to be thirty-one in a young person's game, to be doing the most consequential thing of your career at a moment when most athletes are beginning to think about what comes next. This resonates emotionally in a way that transcends tennis. We've covered queer romance and emotionally rich sports narratives on That Love Podcast before, and The Open Era stands comfortably alongside the best of what the genre has produced. It's a book that does exactly what we celebrate in our romance book recommendations: using genre to illuminate something genuinely true.
What This Book Gets Absolutely Right
The tennis is thrillingly written. The match sequences are among the best sports writing I've encountered in romance fiction — technically accurate, physically visceral, and emotionally charged in a way that makes each point feel weighted with meaning beyond the score.
Both protagonists are fully, equally realised. The dual-POV structure works beautifully here because Schmit has given Marcus and Nikolai distinct inner lives that the reader can inhabit with equal investment. This is surprisingly rare.
The queer experience is handled with complexity and care. The novel resists the temptation to make Marcus a simple beacon of pride or Nikolai a simple victim of circumstance. Both men's relationships to their sexuality are specific, historically grounded, and honestly rendered.
The slow burn is genuinely agonising (in the best way). Schmit understands that in a good sports romance, the competition and the romance should rhyme — each raising the stakes of the other. He executes this beautifully.
The ending manages to be hopeful without being false. The novel's resolution doesn't pretend that everything is simple or solved. It gives its characters something real and hard-won and possible — which is the most honest kind of happy ending.
Where the Book Could Have Gone Further
Nikolai's family background could be explored more deeply. We understand the pressures he faces in broad terms, but more specificity about his family's relationship to his sexuality and his career would have added dimension.
Some of the supporting players feel underdeveloped. The coaches, managers, and fellow players who surround Marcus and Nikolai are sketched rather than fully drawn. A few of them felt like placeholders in scenes where more texture would have been welcome.
The middle section occasionally loses momentum. Around the midpoint of the tournament, there's a stretch where the plot treads water slightly — the relationship advancing and retreating in a pattern that, while emotionally realistic, could have been varied a bit more.
Books to Read If You Loved This One
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid – The queer sports romance that shifted the genre, featuring NHL rivals navigating a secret relationship over years of competition. If you loved the sports-as-backdrop-for-impossible-love energy of The Open Era, this is essential.
The Long Game by Elena Armas – A slow-burn contemporary romance in a sports-adjacent world with the same quality of emotional patience and the same commitment to characters whose walls come down one brick at a time.
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender – For readers who want more thoughtful exploration of queer identity, visibility, and the complicated terrain of being seen. Different in setting and tone but thematically resonant.
Who Should Read This Book
The Open Era is for queer romance readers who want more — more depth, more complexity, more genuine engagement with what it means to be a gay man in the public eye in 2026. It's for sports romance fans who want a sport that's rendered with real knowledge and love. And it's for anyone who has ever wondered whether being willing to be visible and being willing to be truly known are really the same thing.
Whether you're a long-time romance reader or someone just discovering how much the genre can do, check out our full romance reading recommendations at That Love Podcast — and let this book be the first thing on your list.
Content warnings: Anxiety and panic attacks, public outing fears, homophobia in historical/political context (not depicted graphically), references to injury.
How This Book Made Me Feel
Reading The Open Era felt like watching a match I'd been waiting for all season. The slow build of tension, the moments of almost-connection that resolve just past the point where I could breathe — it was exactly that. I read the US Open final scenes with my heart in my throat, and I don't think it was entirely because of the tennis.
When Marcus and Nikolai finally — and I say finally in the most loving, tortured way possible — reached the moment I'd been waiting for, I did a small, private, embarrassing fist pump in my living room. That's the sign of a sports romance working exactly as it should: the love story and the competition story become so entangled that you can't tell which one you're rooting for anymore. You're just rooting for these people. You're just rooting for love.
Final Verdict
The Open Era is one of the most impressive debut romances in years — a queer sports love story of real intelligence and real beauty, written by a novelist who clearly loves both tennis and storytelling deeply. Edward Schmit has announced himself as a genuinely important new voice in romance fiction, and I cannot wait to see what he writes next.
Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it. And maybe also go back and watch some tennis, because this novel will make you love the sport.
👉 Order your copy of The Open Era on Amazon and start reading this weekend.
About the Author
Edward Schmit is a debut novelist whose background includes sports journalism and a deep personal history with tennis. The Open Era is his first novel. He lives in New York.
Find The Open Era and follow Edward Schmit's journey on Goodreads.
From the ThatLovePodcast Team
At That Love Podcast, we believe love stories — in books, on screen, and in real life — have the power to change us. If this review resonated with you, subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a new recommendation. And if you've already read The Open Era, come find us on social media and tell us what you thought. We love talking books with you.
FAQs
1. Do I need to know anything about tennis to enjoy The Open Era? Not at all. Schmit explains the sport's key concepts naturally within the narrative, and the emotional logic of the story is entirely accessible without any prior tennis knowledge. That said, tennis fans will find extra layers of pleasure in the technical detail.
2. Is The Open Era part of a series? It is a standalone novel. The ending is complete and satisfying on its own terms, though the world is rich enough that readers may hope for more.
3. How explicit is the romance in The Open Era? The heat level is moderate. There is genuine physical and emotional intimacy, but the emphasis is on emotional connection and slow-burn tension rather than explicit content.
4. What is the central trope of The Open Era? It's a rivals-to-lovers story with strong themes of visibility, authenticity, and the tension between public life and private selfhood.
5. Where can I find The Open Era? Available on Amazon, through Thriftbooks, and at your local bookshop.
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