Crew Girl

by Sheila McClure

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Dive into a world of old money, ruthless rivalry, sizzling scandal, and a love triangle that might tear the crew team apart…. A major NETFLIX series, starring Miku Martineau! 

Teagan is a gifted rower whose promising future is derailed by a family scandal. Forced to relocate to the East Coast, Teagan hopes to have a fresh start at the prestigious Easton Prep. But once there, she finds that she's not just the outcast newcomer--she's stuck on land. There's no girls' rowing team at Easton. Her only way onto the water? Taking the helm as coxswain for Easton's notoriously chaotic boys' varsity crew.

Thrown into a world of old money and ruthless competition, Teagan finds herself caught between the arrogant team captain, Josh, and Cam, a quiet but fiercely determined local who refuses to be underestimated.

Warring rivals, messy romantic entanglements, and betrayed friendships spill drama both in and out of the boat. Not to mention her complicated relationship with her mom, Ella. The team's a mess, her life's a mess. Can she fix both and win?

Perfect for fans of Darling Devils by Alexandra Moody and Fake Skating by Lynn Painter. Crew Girl contains slow burn, sweet romance with no spice but maximum passion.

Based on the Crew Girl TV series developed by Vivian Lin and Morwyn Brebner.

Release date: November 3, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 336

Sample

Teagan Tao had heard that there were nine circles of hell. Five days stuck in a car with her mom on an enforced cross-country road trip was definitely one of them.

Ella Tao-Emerson. Former small-town beauty queen, cockeyed optimist, low-key delulu.

“Teags!” her mom squealed out of nowhere.

Drop the low key. She was straight-up delulu.

“Teagan, look!” Ella pointed at the hundredth Friendly’s they’d passed since they’d hit the East Coast.

Its bright red signage popped cheerily against the white clapboard exterior exuding a “families welcome” vibe. A vibe that excluded them as they weren’t exactly a family anymore. Not since her dad had gone AWOL six months ago when the FBI showed up at Teagan’s regatta. He had disappeared before she’d crossed the finish line. A first. Sent her mom a pathetic text saying “sorry” after he’d hit the road.

You’d think six months was long enough to get used to the fact her dad was a wanted felon, but nope! Not so much.

She could feel her mom’s eyes on her—anxiously hopeful Teagan would join her in this celebratory sighting of a chain restaurant—so she tried to make one of those bright oooh, cool sounds, but an unexpected scratchy sting of tears morphed it into a lackluster hmmph.

What the hell? Teagan wasn’t a crier. Whenever she got upset after a training session or a bad race, her dad always cited one of his The Way of Tao philosophies: There’s no reason to despair. All problems have a solution—you just need to face it head on to see the way forward.

Not all of them legal, apparently. Or worth facing head on given the fact he’d vanished. According to the search warrant (a freaking search warrant!), David Tao—California’s premier boutique hotel visionary, doting husband (gross), best dad/coach/parent ever—had been quietly defrauding his investors of millions and was currently on the run. Not exactly the behavior of a hero. Not even in a Deadpool kind of way.

How was she supposed to come to terms with that? Was she as delusional as her mom? Her dad was the reason she rowed. Why colleges like Stanford, his alma mater, were keeping their eye on her. It was hard not to despair.

“Earth to Teagan.” Her mom’s hand waved in front of her face. “Did you see the Friendly’s?”

“What? Yes. Why?” Teagan snapped. “Have you been manifesting Fluffernutter Sundae energy?”

Her mom gave an overly jolly hoot of laughter. The kind that masked the hurt she felt when Teagan’s Toxic Teen Tone hit too sharp. “I see someone’s been Googling the menu,” she teased. Warily. “Would you like to get sundaes? We went there with your grandmother last time we were here.”

“What? When I was four?”

“Who stops liking sprinkles?”

“Who starts liking sprinkles?” Teagan knew she was being a brat. She tipped back her head and gave a silent wail of despair. God, she missed being on the water.

“There was a Starbucks about twenty minutes back.” Her mom gave her a desperate-to-please smile.

As easy as it was, punishing her mom because of what her dad did wasn’t fair. “How about we have DIY sundaes after I win my first regatta?”

“Deal.”

They both might be waiting longer than either of them liked to make good on it. Despite some forensic internet searches, she’d yet to find clear evidence of a rowing team on Easton Prep’s website.

Teagan’s mom had grown up in Eagle’s Cove and had always dreamed of going to Easton Prep, the school in the “castle.” Thanks to the education trust her dad had set up—one of the few things the FBI hadn’t confiscated—Teagan would be making her mom’s dream come true. At a price. It had meant leaving California so they could live in the house her mom had inherited from her parents (so, free). Ella had eBayed and Vinted pretty much everything that hadn’t been carted away in evidence vans, and even then, Teagan had overheard her telling a gas station cashier that it was barely enough to cover the motels and gas to get to Massachusetts.

“Mom.” They both heard the panic in her voice. “Easton Prep does have a girls’ rowing team, right?”

“I’m sure it does,” her mom said through a forced laugh. “It’s beside a lake.”

“That means they have geese, but not necessarily a rowing team.” She wiggled her phone between them. “I can’t find them on any of the top-ten rankings.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Ella pointed at a sign listing the exit to Eagle’s Cove. “I’m getting some good vibes, Teagy-T.” She gave Teagan’s head a stroke, like she was a cat. “All the feely feels.”

Teagan returned her mom’s hand to the steering wheel. “Eyes on the road, please, Mother.”

“Hey, Teags. Despite what you think, I can do two things at once. Drive and be happy that we’re in the friendliest state in the West.”

“East,” they both autocorrected as Ella drifted into the next lane. A bunch of people honked at them as the SUV lurched back into the right lane.

An increasingly familiar silence filled the car. The kind that’s so loud you itch to play pop music at full volume to drown out your thoughts. Thoughts like, How am I going to survive life without my dad?

She missed him so much it literally hurt. True. She also wanted to tie him to a chair and demand honest answers to a thousand questions before handing him over to the Feds to face the music if he had really done everything they said he had.

Teagan pulled at her seat belt and hoicked herself around so she was facing her mom.

“Why aren’t you more pissed off, Mom? I thought you hated Eagle’s Cove. It’s not like you’re going to get aura points for pretending everything’s perfect.”

They both winced. It was fair to say heart-to-hearts weren’t really their thing.

Her mom took a minute to answer. “I think if you look for positive things, you’re more likely to see them.” She flicked on the turn signal, letting her gaze skid across Teagan’s face before glancing back at traffic in the exit lane, muttering “Masshole” at a tricked-out pickup truck that wouldn’t let her in.

Masshole. Good one. She’d have to remember that. Easier to pronounce than Massachusettsan.

Once they’d taken the exit, her mom’s perky smile reappeared. “Ready to be surprised?”

“What?” A bolt of adrenaline shot through her. “Is Dad here? Is he hiding at the house?”

Her mom’s smile vanished. Of course he wasn’t.

Why did she keep putting her foot in it? She should’ve said yes when her mom suggested they go to the Mustard Museum. It would’ve been torture, but there might’ve been hot dogs, and it would’ve been a less painful way to acknowledge that Teagan knew none of this was her mom’s fault. Both of their worlds had revolved around David Tao. And he’d disappeared from both of their lives. Teagan didn’t know how many imaginary scenarios she’d put him in since that day. Abducted by aliens? Living rough in Yosemite? Or, and this one sucked the most, was he living large on a private island with a secret family who loved him every bit as much as they did?

Not knowing was what hurt the most.

They were on a two-lane road winding through a thick woodland now, the trees showing a few hints that it would be fall soon. Even though the speed limit was sixty, the speedometer was barely hitting forty-five. Was Ella enjoying the view or delaying the inevitable?

Teagan rolled down her window. The car smelled like drive-through food and burnt sage. She discreetly gave her pits a sniff. And maybe a little bit of her. She’d been wearing her favorite sweats since they’d left California. She stuck her face into the wind like a dog, willing the sun on her face and the briny tang of the sea to clear her brain.

She would die if there wasn’t a rowing team.

Not knowing where her dad was, or if he’d done all those things was bad enough. But rowing? It was her lifeblood. The one thing she’d need to keep her head above water. Literally and figuratively.

She sat back with a huff and stuck her arm out the window, cupping her hand so she could catch the wind the way her oars caught the water. Catch, drive it forward, tilt the palm, release. Catch, drive, finish, recover. Catch, drive, finish, recover. The familiar cadence was a reminder that she knew how to focus. How to push through pain. Physical pain anyway. But this? Emotional Armageddon when the one parent sitting next to you wasn’t the one you relied on in a crisis?

For as long as she could remember, Teagan’s philosophy had been The Way of Tao. Her father’s moral and ethical guide to life. Sure, he’d made it up, so he’d set the parameters. But she’d bought it. Just like she’d believed their lives were pretty perfect right up until FBI agents marched through their house taking just about everything. They’d left her medals. Whoop-de-doo!

Maybe in a different universe her mom was right. If she looked at it as a new beginning rather than the end of everything, nothing but possibility lay ahead.

“Are there any people here?” Teagan asked. “Or is it just trees?”

“Oh, there aren’t just people,” Ella said, clearly delighted at this new chance to sprinkle fairy dust on their situation. “There is also,” she drew out the words as they rounded a corner, then triumphantly announced, “a fudge shop!”

“You don’t like fudge.”

“No one actually likes fudge,” Ella allowed. “But I like that it exists. And there’s the Crab Shack.” She slowed as they drove past the hand-painted, sun-faded green and white clapboard restaurant. Jim’s Crab Shack. “I used to work there.” Her eyes developed a sudden gloss. “They have the best crab cakes.”

Something told Teagan her mom wasn’t fighting tears of culinary rapture. There was something more. Yet another secret her parents had kept from her? She knew she should say something nice but what came out instead was a deadpan, “Mother. That is a heinous understanding of what ‘cake’ is.”

“Don’t call me Mother,” Ella play-pouted. “It makes me feel old.”

“You are old,” Teagan teased back.

Her mom turned on to yet another tree-lined street, this one standing out from the others with its dappling of pastel-colored Victorian houses. Her heart skipped a beat. Maybe living at her grandparents’ house wouldn’t be all bad.

She was about to say, “At least we’re not living in that one,” as they approached a dilapidated house when her mother pulled the car into the driveway.

It might’ve been nice. Twenty-five years ago. Or a hundred. She’d been too young to remember the last time they were here. But right now, it was giving serious haunted house vibes.

Her mom put the car into park, gave Teagan a here-goes-nothing shrug and grin as she unclipped her seat belt. “Welcome home, sweetie!”

“Thanks, Mom.” They had just reached the ninth circle of hell.

“You stay here, Dad,” Cam insisted. “I’ll get the tires.” He pushed himself up and out of the mechanic’s well. “He’ll never know the difference.”

Cam’s dad, Oren Dillinger, wasn’t so sure. Taking off his cap and giving his chestnut-brown mop of hair Cam had inherited a scrub was the giveaway. “He was pretty insistent that he wanted me to pick them up.”

Before his dad could say the customer was always right, Cam jumped in. “The fact you’re able to fix that idiot’s car in two days is a miracle in and of itself. Any other town on the coast and he’d be stuck in a rental for weeks. It’s not your fault he was stupid enough to try bunny-hopping speed bumps in a sports car.”

Cam’s dad gave him a sharp look. It matched his tone. “They’re customers, son. Not idiots.”

“I know. Their mistakes keep us in steak.” It was a refrain his dad had been saying since he was a kid. Cam never pointed out the obvious: The Dillinger family dinner table wasn’t exactly groaning under a platter of grilled tomahawks every night. But he got it. Dissing a rich person with an income that sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime lottery win for making a mistake was no better than a rich person belittling a mechanic for having grease under their nails after fixing a car. They were all human. He sure as hell wasn’t perfect.

Either way, when this guy paid his bill, they could pay theirs.

He shrugged off his coveralls, remembered he was wearing his ankle-high steel toes when they were halfway down, debated taking them off, ruled it out, tied the arms around his hips. It wasn’t like he was going to run into someone from school. Everyone was away for the last few days of break and his social life was as nonexistent as the dodo bird. Between the shop, training, and finishing the books on his summer reading list, the only other thing he had time for was sleep.

He drained his water bottle, refilled it at the water cooler, then popped it in the fridge alongside the energy drinks he was going to bring to the lake. If, that is, he got to the lake. He wasn’t allowed to take boats out after eight and if he was going to get a two-hour rowing session in, he needed to get his butt in gear.

“Dad.” Cam held up a can of ginger ale, his favorite. “Want one?”

“Only if you don’t throw it like you did the last time.”

They shared a laugh. Working with his dad full-time had been great. Not that he’d thought it would be bad or anything. It was more that he’d wanted his dad to know he could handle the responsibility, and over the summer had proved it.

He walked over to the pit, squatted down, and handed the soda to him with a flourish, like he was presenting a fine wine.

“Thank you, son.” Oren took the drink and popped the top, draining most of it in one. “Right,” he said, after finishing the rest. “Better get back to it.”

After squishing the can, he shot it at the recycling can, which had a basketball hoop over it. He missed.

“Should’ve put the pit closer,” they said in tandem.

A running family joke.

The pit, which let the mechanics walk underneath cars safely, was the one upgrade Cam’s mom had made nonnegotiable when she and Oren had started talking about getting married. “I don’t want to come in one day and find you flat as a pancake.” She’d even insisted he use the money he’d been saving for her engagement ring.

“The only thing of value to me is you two,” she said whenever Dad tried to put a bit aside to get her one instead of paying a bill. “Besides,” she would say, “do you really think a diamond is going to make our lives better?”

“Not in the slightest,” Oren had said once, giving her an innocent smile. “There’s only one thing that could make my life better.”

“What?” Cam’s mom had demanded.

“We should’ve moved the pit closer to the recycling can. I keep getting rim shots.”

It had taken her a beat to figure out he was kidding, but when she had, it was like always. They’d laughed themselves silly and he’d pulled her onto his lap, which even young Cam knew was his cue to get the hell out of there. It was cool his parents were still madly in love, but he had no interest in watching them mash on each other. Gross.

He scooped up his dad’s can and slam-dunked it on his way to the office, where he punched the code into the office phone that forwarded calls to his cell. The fewer distractions his dad had the better. “You got Walt’s keys, Dad?” The shop truck was called Walt after the guy who gave it to them ages ago when he’d switched to a mobility scooter.

“On the board.”

The peg board was under the wall-mounted Rube Goldberg clock Cam had made from old car parts in his engineering class last year. His dad had thought it was genius. Cam only saw the things he’d do better if he did it again, but still, it did what it was supposed to. Tell the time.

His dad was always bragging about it to any customer stupid enough to mention it. “Cam’ll be the first Dillinger going to college,” he’d tell them. Mortifying. But also kind of cool. If it happened. “I’ll be back in half an hour, Dad. Okay? Forty minutes, tops.”

Oren looked at the clock and frowned. “It’s four o’clock. I thought you were going down to the lake.”

He started unwrapping the oil-stained blister tape on his right hand. He probably wouldn’t make it. Lying about it wouldn’t work. Especially if there was eye contact. “Lake’ll be there after I get the tires.”

He could feel his dad hard-staring him. He ripped off the rest of the tape and dumped it in the trash. “I’m not going to compromise my scholarship, okay?”

“I’ll fire you on the spot if you do,” Oren threatened. In a loving kind of way, but Cam knew he meant it. There was a real chance Cam could go to college, and he knew his dad would happily sell a kidney to get him there.

“I’ll go when I get back,” he called over his shoulder. If there was time. Once he’d fired up Walt’s engine and put him in gear, he began a slow reverse out of the shop forecourt, making sure to look right, left, then right again—BAM!

What the hell?

He slammed on the brakes, heart thumping like a jackhammer, doubling in pace when he caught a flash of something airborne in the rearview mirror that landed in the truck bed with a thunk. Whatever it was, it could swear.

Shitshitshitshitshitshit.

He tore off his seat belt and flew out of the vintage truck so fast a life behind bars didn’t have time to flash before his eyes.

The UFO was a teenage girl around his age. Living. Breathing. No fountains of blood. Phew. He wouldn’t be spending the rest of his life in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Thank god he’d put a pile of tarps on the toolboxes this morning. Which made him wonder if future him had known a hot teenage girl was going to endo into the truck.

“Hey!” She scrabbled to her knees without screaming in agony, which boded well.

“You need to watch where you’re going,” she sniped.

He had been.

Her fingers were shaking as she unclipped her helmet. Nerves. Adrenaline. Totally normal. If he’d done an up-and-over into a pickup truck, his would be, too. It wasn’t like he was calm either.

She had pretty brown eyes. Really dark brown. And they were currently trained on him, like she was trying to bore a hole in him.

“You’re not going to ask if I’m okay?”

He took a beat before answering. She was scared. So was he, if fear meant thinking she looked like the kind of girl he’d ask out for tacos if they’d met another way.

Errr… Earth to Cam. Tires? The Lake? “You look okay to me.”

Her eyes widened.

“Uninjured,” he clarified as he crouched down to grab her bike.

“Do people drive with their eyes closed around here?”

Ah. She was a tourist. Which meant she’d be gone soon. No taco dates for him. He stood, leaving his “customer is always right” filter on the ground.

“You hit me,” he began, and definitely would’ve kept on going if he hadn’t been caught short watching her negotiate the uneven terrain in the truck bed. Even though her cargo pants, T-shirt, and jean jacket were baggy, core strength and strong legs were the only way to explain why it looked like she was walking on water instead of navigating a seabed of mismatched toolboxes. Surfer, maybe? Something that required balance anyway.

She saw him watching and shot him a look like she was still waiting for him to beg for forgiveness.

No way. He wasn’t going to apologize for something that wasn’t his fault, but as an olive branch, he picked up her bike and slid it lengthways across the truck bed to make sure it was still rideable.

“What are you doing?”

“Stealing it,” he deadpanned.

She snorted.

At least she had a sense of humor.

Though obviously functional, the bike was not from this decade. Maybe even this century. And not in a retro way. Whoever this girl was, she wasn’t a washashore—one of the rich folks who tripled Eagle’s Cove’s population over the summer.

“Tick tock. Still waiting for that apology,” she said.

Talked like one, though.

“You were riding on the sidewalk.” He checked to see if any lightbulbs went on. In Massachusetts, riding a bike on the sidewalk was illegal in business districts. Even if it was a stretch to call Eagle’s Cove’s main drag—a mishmash of overpriced boutiques, cafes, and discount stores selling beach supplies—a business district.

No lightbulbs so, to be helpful, and because sparring with this girl was strangely fun, he added, “On a blind turn.”

She looked away, meaning, she got it now. She hit him.

He pulled the bike off the truck and flipped it upside down to rest on its handlebars. “Your chain’s slipped.” He glanced back. “You know how to fix it?”

She gave an exasperated sigh that said, No, idiot, I do not.

The chain and gear-change mechanism were begging for some WD40. He reached into the truck to grab his toolbox only to nearly crack heads with her. She fell back on the tarps and gave a frustrated growl. “You really are trying to kill me, aren’t you,” she grumbled when he held out a hand to pull her back up.

She begrudgingly accepted the offer, but when her hand touched his, her eyes shot to his face. So she’d felt it, too. The energy shift from combat mode to… you’re not as bad as I first thought. Her cheeks turned a cute shade of crimson when he got his hand back.

He stood aside, so she could scooch off the back of the truck. She didn’t move. Like she found it enjoyable being a few feet above him. “I need to get under the tarp.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Is that where you store the bodies of your other hit-and-run victims?”

“Busted,” he said, then, because time really was against him, tipped his head toward her bike. “I need to get the toolbox you’re standing on so I can fix your bike.” It was an easy fix, popping a chain back onto a derailleur. A squirt of oil would have to serve as the apology she wanted to squeeze out of him.

She jumped off the lip of the truck, and though she’d only given him a passing glance as she did it, he saw a chink in her armor. Something that suggested she knew she was being scratchy but was actually mad about som. . .