The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

This book is the sequel to the very fun Dairy Queen which I read last year. DJ Schwenk is, if you can believe it, a girl on her high school football team! And she's really good, too. I would so have loved to play football in high school. It's one of my favorite sports. Anyway, she's got a lot to deal with, as you can imagine, being a girl on the football team and all. And not only that, but her boyfriend is the star quarterback of the rival high school's team, so that's another big problem. Well, in some ways it's a problem, and in some ways it's the best thing ever.

DJ also lives on a farm and has to help her father out with the farm a lot. Farm life is difficult and non-stop, so there's always something that needs doing, and her father's health isn't the greatest, so DJ's had to pick up a lot of the slack. And then the world sort of comes crashing down when DJ gets hurt on the football field jeopardizing her chance at a basketball scholarship - something her parents say she's really going to need if she wants to have any chance of going to college - and her brother gets hurt really badly playing college football and DJ's the only one who can really go take care of him.

It's a book with a lot of heartbreak in it, but a lot of hilarity and love in it as well. As usual, not as good as the first in the series, but well worth the read.