SUNDAY LEAGUE BY CHRISTIAN FLINN

"Why are there so few football novels?" asks the press release that came with this book. Forgive me for a second but I think I can answer that one - because most are bloody awful. There are exceptions - The Damned United, Striker and Football Crazy off the top of my head - but it's quite a difficult thing to pull off.

While all the ingredients are within for the best sporting drama it's often difficult to capture the nuances of the game without resorting to Roy of the Rovers style tropes. It can be done and when it's written well fictional football can be as entertaining as any book about the real thing, which brings us to Sunday League, the new and debut novel by Christian Flinn. 

The story follows Danny Milburn, a pub striker given a shot at the big time. While that sounds like a well-worn path what follows is actually a well written, well paced and funny story that never descends into the boring clichés most footballing works of fiction do. Thoroughly enjoyable throughout, the excerpts of newspaper articles littered in and amongst really add something to the story and the portrait of Newcastle is affectionate without wandering into self-parody. Defintiely worth your time, fire up the Kindle on my whistle...

You can pick up a copy here via Amazon and learn a bit more about it here. You can also follow the author on Twitter here.