HOLY MOLY IT’S TWO BOOKS AT THE SAME TIME (and they are connected!!) and right up my reading alley.
When Liz Berry from Blue Box Press announced:
Jillian and I have been sitting on this news and are SO ready to share it! 🤍⚾️❤️
This fall, we’re publishing Just Enough by David Eckstein and Jake Gronsky, and Lucky 22 by Ashley Eckstein and Samantha Chase as a dual release, and we couldn’t be prouder. David’s memoir is about earning everything the hard way, and Ashley’s romance is about the love story behind the career. One is legacy. The other is heart. Together, they’re something truly special.
We said yes to these books immediately, because that’s what we do when something feels exactly right, and we hope you love them as much as we do!
A huge thank you to Variety for announcing these upcoming releases so beautifully, and to David and Ashley for trusting us with these stories.
I was SO curious. And BOY WHAT A STORY IT IS, MY FRIENDS!!!!!
Holy moly, I just went down the most fun rabbit hole. I mean come on… YOU KNOW I absolutely LOVE celebrity autobiographies, and a romance book about their story to boot? We swoon over these books every day, and now, we get a real one.
YES. PLEASE!!!!! And guess what? BOTH BOOKS ARE LIVE TODAY!!!
Okay, so here’s what I discovered… One of today’s new sports romances comes with a pretty fantastic little twist: About 90% of it ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Okay so…
LUCKY 22 is a new contemporary baseball romance from Ashley Eckstein and Samantha Chase, inspired by Ashley’s real-life love story with former MLB player and World Series MVP David Eckstein. And when they say “inspired by,” they REALLY mean it.
Okay so, Ashley (our real life heroine) was an aspiring actress living in Los Angeles. David was playing professional baseball. They’d both grown up in Central Florida (side note: OMG I LIVE IN Central Florida too!!)—only about 35 minutes apart—but somehow had to move across the country before fate finally got involved.
And apparently fate had a favorite number: 22. Ashley was born on September 22nd, so 22 had always been her lucky number. Then one day she went to an Angels game wearing the jersey of one particular player…
David Eckstein. #22.
David spotted her from the field. They made eye contact. And eventually, mutual friends helped arrange a not-so-blind blind date—to a movie premiere. Tell me that doesn’t already sound like a romance novel. 😂
(And yes, I obviously had to go investigate whether all of this really happened. It DID! You can read more about their ridiculously romance-novel-worthy meet-cute in this MLB feature about Ashley and David.)
Well…now it IS a romance novel.
In LUCKY 22, aspiring actress Ella Rose Holt is approaching her golden birthday—turning 22 on September 22nd—when professional baseball player Christian Lucas comes into her life.
Yes. He wears #22. And yes. There’s a movie-premiere date. Ashley says the finished romance is about 90% true, with bestselling romance author Samantha Chase helping her turn the real-life story into fiction. (Ashley and David tell a whole lot more about the story behind both books in this Publishers Weekly interview.)
But here’s where today’s release gets even cooler…
The REAL baseball player in this love story has a new book releasing TODAY, too!
David Eckstein’s JUST ENOUGH is his memoir about the undersized kid who was repeatedly told he wasn’t big enough or good enough to make it—then went on to play ten seasons in Major League Baseball, become a two-time All-Star, win two World Series championships and earn World Series MVP.
And after Ashley spent years encouraging her husband to finally tell his story, somehow HIS memoir led to HER turning their love story into a romance. Now they’re releasing the two books together on the very same day, in what Ashley calls their “His and Hers” release. (There’s a fantastic Publishers Weekly feature about how this unusual husband-and-wife publishing adventure came together, too.)
His story. Her romance. Their real-life happily ever after. ❤️
Thank you so much for sharing these!!