A Life of Two Halves

He's the Premier League's most valuable asset. But to the men who run the game, he's just a brand to be managed.Matthew Delany is twenty-six, one of the finest midfielders in the Premier League, and the keeper of a private life he has spent fourteen years protecting. PFA Player of the Year. A World Cup six months away. A life arranged around what is public and what is not-not from shame, but from strategy.Then someone decides that arrangement is a liability.A powerful football agent. An FA with commercial interests that require a certain kind of player. A conspiracy that operates entirely through implication, omission, and deniability-and that is prepared to go further than Matthew anticipated.Into all this walks Victor. Twenty years old. A psychology student working behind the bar at Matthew's local pub. The one person who sees Matthew with a clarity Matthew cannot apply to himself, and the one person who makes the "strategy" of his private life feel like currency.A Life of Two Halves is a gripping contemporary drama about institutional power and the violence it can enact without leaving evidence. It is a love story told almost entirely through proximity and restraint. It is the story of a man from Coventry who must decide if he will accept the brand they've built for him-or choose a second life that answers to no one.Perfect for fans of high-stakes sports fiction and sophisticated LGBTQ+ character dramas, this unputdownable novel explores the true cost of integrity in the billion-pound world of elite football.

Pages: 296, Paperback, Phoenix City Books