And just when you thought things couldn't get any hotter...well guess again. I absolutely adore the way these books all have a different couple as the main focus, but the characters out of the previous books play such a major role in them still. Their lives are so interwoven, it would be wrong to separate them.

Jude and Will are super-hot together. Two seemingly straight boys... but the heat they manage to generate between them is enough to start a wild-fire!

Just please, Ms Celeste...don't tell me this is the end. I need to know more about these guys. I'm nowhere near ready to let any of them go just yet! ( )

I want more! ( )

Good Book. Love that there was actually a story there and a good one at that. Although this is the first book I have read in the series I do not feel that I was missing anything pertinent to the story. ( )

Reading Challenge 2014: February--Pick a book from a series you're behind on

Grade: A

Offside Chance by Mercy Celeste is the third in the Southern Scrimmages series and the author suggests that the books be read in order: Six Ways from Sunday, Sidelined, and finally Offside.

The books deal with professional American football players and homosexuality, a combination that was popping up in the news during the season and will probably be cropping up fairly regularly now that pro athletes are coming out of the closet.

Six Ways from Sunday has to do with an NFL tight end and a career Marine who fall in love even though they can't be together as much as they like. When the Marine is captured and presumed dead, the football player thinks his life has ended. But has it?

Not answering that question but moving on to book two, Sidelined. In this book, a successful quarterback is cut from his team and decides to go back to his hometown where he hopes to figure out his twisted life. Jude, his lawyer brother, persuades him to help coach the new high school's football team, made up of students from previously rival high school teams. The head coach? Once the quarterback's high school rival.

Celeste constructs interesting and elaborate plots, and Offside is no different from her previous books. Here Jude, the lawyer, moves back to New Orleans to look after Levi's house, but is surprised to find a hulking football player, Levi's best friend, already ensconced there.

William Slater is standing on the edge of a breakdown since his house burned down, his contract is about to expire, and Levi has turned out to be someone he barely recognizes. His refuge in Levi's house is compromised, however, when Levi's brother Jude appears. Initially, the only thing they seem to bond on is how perplexed they are about Levi declaring himself flamboyantly gay.

Read the rest of my review at Pat Booked: http://patbooked.blogspot.com/2014/02/not-so-offside-this-time-around.html ( )