Offsides by Eden Butler

Offsides by Eden Butler

🍸🍸🍸🍸

Blurb

Gia Jilani had rules.

They kept her safe and her head in the game. 

As the NFL’s first female general manager, there were risks to be weighed and taken.

Like Kai Pukui, the linebacker helping her team dominate on the field. 

The same quiet, beautiful man who stares too long at her and reminds her of how decadent, and risky living life can be. 

But when Gia discovers why Kai seems so familiar and why she feels so drawn to him, things like risks and love become secondary to loss and pain.

Gia will have to decide what’s more important – a life worth risking or a love worth losing.

Buy Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Google Play

Review

(Note: I have read these books in the wrong order. Offsides is part of a series, but I was in a mood and grabbed this one off my Kindle at random. The Book Blitz I posted last month lists the books in proper order.)

I haven’t watched football since 2016, but I was excited to see books addressing women in the sport. Hell, I’m excited to see books about women in pro sports, at all. I had the opportunity to grab ARCs of Offsides and Roughing the Kicker, so of course I did. I don’t regret it for a single second, although I’m glad my Spawn fell asleep before she could see the sobbing mess this book turned me into.

Gia doesn’t need the certified tragic backstory to account for the decisions she makes. Her position as the first female GM in the NFL is inherently precarious, and it’s not exactly a secret that women are judged more harshly than men for just about everything but especially anything sexual. Look at the case with a certain recently resigned Congresswoman and you’ll see my point.

That said, Gia does have the certified tragic backstory. She has loved, she has lost, and she doesn’t ever want to feel that kind of pain again. And honestly, by eschewing entanglements she’s gotten to the top position in her field. Who can blame her for her choice?  (Everyone, apparently, but moving on…)

Kai brings with him his own issues. I do like him, but he seems to have a hard time with the word “no.”  It’s probably meant to be persistence, but it still bothered me on a level I can’t really express properly. He doesn’t come off as rapey, but it’s still the kind of thing that makes me queasy. That said, he’s had a rough life and it’s easy to see why he makes some of the choices he makes.

I kind of felt like the solution the team came up with in the end was a little too easy. On the one hand, I want the world to work like that for women. I want it to be possible for women to live their lives in a corporate world and not have to constantly watch their backs. On the other, I’d be appalled if the same solution were offered to a man. (They get away with this and worse all the time, but that’s beside the point.)

Without this solution, I’m not sure a true HEA would be achievable. Gia’s worked too hard for too long to throw it away for some guy, and if she’s not with the guy in the end it’s not a romance. If she’s not with the football player in the end it’s not a sports romance. So – this is how things have to be, but something about it still didn’t quite sit right with me. Maybe I’m a little too wound up right now.

Neither my misgivings about the solution, nor my discomfort with Kai’s persistence, kept me from sobbing my way through this book or wanting to see them together in the end. That’s the mark of an excellent author. Right now is the perfect time of year for some good football romance. Curl up with it between games and enjoy.