This past Friday, I attended my daughter’s high school’s first football game of the season. I was there with my sister-in-law Stephanie, her husband J, and her mom Asunta, who is visiting from Venezuela. We weren’t really there for the football game. Corinne plays in the marching band. But when the band isn’t on the field, there’s a football game to watch.

At one point (ok, at three points 🙄), our team decided to try an onside kick. I had to explain to Stephanie how an onside kick works. She grew up in a few different countries, but none of them were the United States. Asunta doesn’t speak English, so Stephanie explained the onside kick to her. It was abundantly clear from her response that Asunta told Stephanie that she KNEW how it worked. But Stephanie said she just never remembers.

I laughed and told Stephanie that it was ok because her brother was the same way.

Dennis was not a fan of American football. I have mentioned before his love of the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, and he regularly watched English Premier League games. In fact, we subscribed to a soccer channel so he would have access to almost all of the games. I spent a lot of time watching soccer with him.

The only time he spent watching football with me, however, was Super Bowl Sunday. As far as he was concerned, football is a sissy sport, and he would put a soccer player up against a football player as an athlete any day of the week. I tried to explain to him that there are different types of athletes, but he refused to accept it. So his favorite part of the Super Bowl was, obviously, the commercials.

And every year, I would have to explain to him what they meant by 1st & 10, 2nd & 5, 3rd & 2, etc. I had to explain every penalty. He just didn’t (want to) retain the explanation. And he absolutely hated the instant replay and the fact that a one-hour game took three hours to watch.

The only time I ever saw Dennis actually enjoy a football game was at my brother’s one year. It was a playoff game, and we were having an early family Christmas because my brother was going to be working on Christmas Day. All of us girls were in the dining room, and the boys were in the kitchen…just talking, but the game was on in the family room and they were watching from the kitchen.

All of a sudden, I heard, “Go, go go, run, run, go, go go!” I thought I was imagining things and said, “Is that my husband cheering for a football game?” When we were leaving, my brother said that Dennis was a lot more fun when he was drunk. He claimed he wasn’t drunk. He had just been drinking the punch. The punch that had a whole bottle of vodka in it…that he had about 10 cups of. If you’re wondering, yes, I took the keys and drove home. 🥴🤪

Before Dennis and I got married, I religiously watched the Chicago Bears games. I have friends who talk about what a horrible franchise it is now and that people have to go all the way back to 1985 to remember a Super Bowl win. In fairness, the team that season was pretty phenomenal. I still say that the only thing I would have changed in that Super Bowl was that I would have liked Walter Payton to score a touchdown, but the New England Patriots were all over him so he never had the chance.

I also used to have a Super Bowl party every year. Sub sandwiches, snacks, beer on the balcony because it was the best place to keep it cold, and an ice cream cake decorated with one side for each team. People only ate from the side they were rooting for. Those were some awesome parties, if I do say so myself.

Dennis and I met online in January of 2002. Neither one of us was ever able to remember the exact date. It was in a chat room, after all. But we know it was January because I invited him to the Super Bowl party I was planning. He lived in New York so obviously wouldn’t come, but he basically told me then that he didn’t believe football was a real sport.

Once we got married, it was a pretty constant debate in our house whether American football players were athletes compared to “real” football (aka soccer) players. I would argue that there are different types of athletes but that all of them are still athletes. He disagreed.

The Bears’ first regular season game is next week. I have a massage scheduled for that afternoon, but I might have to watch the game before I go. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a Super Bowl party this season. I’ll be sure to invite my sister-in-law Stephanie so I have someone to explain the game to. It really wouldn’t be the same otherwise. 😉

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for XOXO by Kathryn R. Biel

389 pages
Publisher: Resilient Books
Publication Date: July 22, 2022
Purchased on Amazon

Publisher’s Description

Here lies Ophelia Finnegan, Hopeless Romantic. Not to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure that’s what my tombstone is going to say.

During my 30 years on this planet, I’ve made a lot of poor decisions pursuing my ideal man. It may have something to do with my slight obsession with romantic comedies, especially those of the British variety. I mean, if Bridget Jones could find her Mr. Darcy, surely I can too, right?

And if I can’t live it, I can at least write a steamy romance novel about it. Except I’m too scared to do that. It’s so much safer to stay in my not-at-all fulfilling job and live vicariously through the ClikClak video app. It’s all well and good, until my surprise visit to my boyfriend doesn’t go as planned, and the video of my humiliation ends up going viral.

In a surprise twist (like any good romantic comedy should have), the guy I’d handed off my phone to film my unexpected humiliation turns out to be hotter than hell British soccer player Xavier Henry. And he’s looking to get traded up here to Boston. The quickest way to make that happen is if he becomes an American citizen … by marrying an American woman.

I volunteer as tribute!

OMG, marriage of convenience is my favorite romantic trope of all time, and now I get to live it. If nothing else, I’ll have great material for that book I swear I’m going to write. All I have to do is remember that this is pretend and that those rock-hard abs aren’t really mine to stroke and lick.

Put me in, coach! I’m ready to take one for the team.

Kisses and hugs, Ophelia

#XOXO

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Main Characters:

• Ophelia Finnegan – 30-year-old accountant who lives in Boston, hopeless romantic, would rather be reading and writing steamy romance novels, in a long-distance relationship with Trent who she met during college but just started a relationship during the COVID shutdown
• Trent Carson – athletic trainer for the U.S. Soccer League, working in Baltimore, only comes back to Boston twice during each season
• Xavier Henry – British soccer player with the Baltimore team, banned from playing in the U.K. due to an accident years before, would like to be traded to the team in Boston

I discovered this particular author on TikTok, which is ironic since ClikClak (clearly a nod to TikTok) is such a prominent part of this story. The whole premise of the book is based on a TikTok video that went viral when a girl surprises her boyfriend at school. She walks in, and he’s on the couch with another girl sitting very close to him. He gets up and acts happy to see his girlfriend, but viewers of the video dissected it ad nauseam and concluded that he was cheating.

I don’t know that I believe Ophelia and Trent were in a relationship. I know that she believes they were, but it’s pretty clear to the reader that they weren’t. He’s a jerk, and she’s naïve, but this isn’t the cheating scandal that the original TikTok video was.

I don’t need to go into detail about the story. The publisher’s description goes into plenty of detail, so I’ll just get into what I liked and didn’t like about the book.

I enjoyed Ophelia’s energy and her hopeless romanticism. She’s not innocent, but she is definitely naïve, which is a bit surprising considering she’s 30. And I don’t understand how she believed she and Trent had a relationship when she only saw him a couple times over the course of an entire soccer season.

Xavier lives for soccer. Everything he does is based on advancing his career and staying in shape for soccer, which also gives him the ability to send money home to his parents in the U.K. for their bird sanctuary. He struggles a bit with the idea of giving up his British citizenship to remain in the U.S., like he thought he was completely denouncing his heritage. That felt a bit inauthentic to me because he tells Ophelia that women have been bothered by how much he focuses on soccer and that’s why relationships haven’t worked.

Their realization of how much they love each other is predictable. Romances always are. They sell because readers enjoy getting to the happily ever after, and Ophelia and Xavier definitely get theirs. This was a solid romance novel that made me smile a few times, mostly because of Ophelia. She’s definitely a character.

Now what knocked down the rating and made this a maybe for me. Three things in particular.

Between the words, “COVID,” “pandemic,” “coronavirus,” and “mask,” there were 55 references to the pandemic. I can get behind a handful of mentions. Ophelia and Trent got together because the world was shut down. ClikClak (TikTok) exploded when people started making videos in lockdown. But mention it and move on. I don’t need the mask/no mask/vaccine conversations in books. They don’t advance the story at all.

Another thing that is pretty important is knowing that (apparently) when you say you’re an accountant on ClikClak, it’s code for the fact that you’re a sex worker. This is also based on a real-life scenario on TikTok. Ophelia didn’t know this (neither did I), and she really is an accountant. But if you as the reader don’t know this, there’s a whole section of the book where people comment on the fact that Ophelia says she’s an accountant that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

The last thing that ruined it for me (and this is pretty big) was actually knowing enough about immigration that I spent 152 pages saying over and over “IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT!” Xavier couldn’t be traded to Boston because there’s a limit on the number of international players in the league. At the end of the book, he gets traded anyway because another player returns to the U.K., but Xavier and Ophelia get married based on the assumption that he will be able to immediately apply for citizenship. Like I said, it doesn’t work like that.

My husband was an immigrant, so I know that you have to be married for three years before you can apply for citizenship. Even once you apply, there’s a process, an exam, a swearing in. And of course Ophelia discovers this after the fact…almost half the book later. So if you’re reading this and you know how the process works, you will be as frustrated with this as I was.

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