Book Review

A Gronking to Remember by Lacey Noonan

I love contemporary sports romances. I may not be fully invested in contemporaries as a whole, but put a muscled up man in a snug-fitting uniform and I’m there. But this…this was not what I had in mind.

Moving to New England has certainly instilled in me a love of the Patriots, and I am no stranger to the nice butts filling out the roster (Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, and of course, Rob Gronkowski). The lone male roommate in the apartment is frequently subjected to my shouts (as well as my roommate’s) of objectification at the players, and the drunker we get, the more explicit our demands. I’ve also not fallen, but wholeheartedly pitched myself down the rabbit hole that is Googling for shirtless Gronk pictures. What I’m trying to say is that I get it. Who wouldn’t want to be Gronked?

“My sewing could wait, I thought—could go to hell for all I cared. Suddenly all I wanted to do was watch Gronk do his thang-thang in the zone place there. My vagina demanded it.”

You and me both.

The NFL has a shitstorm of issues in the way they handle things. Drugs, the health of their players, the treatment of women, etc. But it’s probably best to dedicate a post to that instead of trying to slip it into a review where one of the currently best known tight ends (the joke is obvious here) spikes a football so precisely into a lady’s parts that she is awash in multiple orgasms.

Total spoiler alert, that’s the climax (HEYO – I’ll be here all week) of the entire sixty-something pages.

If you’re looking for some steamy Gronk scenes, this is not the book for you. Our heroine, Leigh, never once makes it to the end zone with the Pats player. Merely, he’s a source of her fantasies to get her rocks off while she deals with her “sour bitch” of a husband. Her term, not mine.

Both main characters were assholes to the point where I didn’t see how they were married in the first place. Dan gets easily aggravated when his wife seems to take an interest in football, snapping and cursing at her. I should also note that he’s a Jets fan and, when she pipes up for the Patriot, he loses his goddamn shit at her. It’s over-the-top and frankly a little scary because he’s always drunk. Always.

At one point, when he finds out about his wife’s object of desire (something that she makes super awkward by asking him to “spike me like Gronk does”) he gets in his car and proceeds to drive into the neighbor’s yard because he’s so plastered.

And every time Dan drunkenly says something stupid, Leigh makes it obvious that there’s no love lost, referencing the fact that she wants to claw his eyes out.

WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE MARRIED?!

I appreciate the fact that the author isn’t taking this seriously, though I certainly challenge anyone to try. Her arousal is frequently referred to as “jiggly ribbons” and I immediately think of stinging jellyfish. Something is just always jiggling or wobbling.

Most of the scenes take place in the man cave/football den and are told through Leigh’s point of view. At first, I really enjoyed her observation of this outwardly male activity through a female lens.

“I sauntered into the den and sat next to Dan on the couch during a commercial, a Cialis ad starring what looked like a decrepit CEO and young prostitute driving around Napa Valley in a convertible.”

Personally, I’ve never felt excluded from participating in football-watching, but I know people who have. That being said, Leigh is the only woman you physically experience in the book and, unfortunately, when she’s around other females at Gillette Stadium, it becomes disastrous. To the point where it left a bad taste in my mouth and instantly changed the F+ WTF-tastic grade I had hoped to give it, to a straight up F.

“Worst of all though…The women. There were women all around us. Football women. Screaming just as loud as the men, waving signs and wearing authorized team gear. It was evident they didn’t understand a lick of what was going on on the field – just that things were happening and a certain pageantry was involved and frothing fervor was required. The fervor they displayed in cheering for the teams could easily be misconstrued as panic and fear of being outed for not understanding anything that was happening around them.”

Well, fuck you. I bitch-faced so hard that I pulled a muscle. Because of these women, the fantasy is ruined and she wants to go home.

Long story short, Dan pulls Leigh onto the field like some crazy fan to save their marriage, then cue the Gronk Spike to the backside as mentioned before. I’m sure many people bought the book because it was making the rounds on social media (me) and some bought the book because they’ve paused their TiVo last Sunday when Gronk almost lost his pants (also me). But it instantly alienated me as a reader because I do enjoy games and I know what’s going on and I’m not doing it for any sort of attention from male fans.

I’ve gotten that shit a lot growing up with my interest in comics and video games, and I’d rather not have that attitude pervade what I choose to read either, regardless of the subject matter. But in this case, the heroine imagining “Mr. Gronkowski fucking my ass with warping power at the Fifty Yard Line” or him “on one knee spiking a bouquet of roses, a bottle of champagne and a diamond ring into my butt.” (In that order? Because I’d go ring, bouquet, and then champagne, personally) was too much of the same. The author also inserts herself in the book as someone who makes a comment to Leigh on Twitter.

So a book that I thought would have me laughing because of its sheer wtf-ery had me enraged instead. Not even a Gronk Spike to my butt can change that. Though I might be willing to test it out. For science. Call me.

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A Gronking to Remember by Lacey Noonan

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  1. Jane Peden says:

    I LOVED this review. You had me laughing out loud and almost spitting my coffee 🙂 Your comment about assumptions about female sports, comics and video game fans was so right on target.

  2. Don’t search ‘shirtless Gronk’ from work! Just saying.

    And is the shirtless Gronk with kittens video a real thing? I was very afraid to click through. Because my laptops little lady parts are afraid of where that video might have been. But if it’s real …

  3. Tania says:

    You know what I would read? A book about a football bad-boy player who inspired an erotic novel (Google told me this book ONE?!!!!)and was trying to live it down.

  4. YES AMANDA, yes it does! The thing is my family heritage is similar to Gronk’s, so the facial features (which is naturally what I’m looking at!) are like all the guys in my family.

    Seriously though – he posed with a kitten for a formal photo shoot? If only I could get Mr. Richland to do that …

  5. Emily says:

    Ok I must be living under a rock on this one but can someone tell me if this is something Gronkowski signed off on? I can’t imagine it is but using his name and likeness without permission sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Also, I can’t get over the champagne, roses,and ring image.

  6. SB Sarah says:

    @Emily: I’m betting that he had no involvement or prior knowledge, but that’s just a guess.

    And I have to confess that as squicky as real-people-fiction makes me feel, and as completely and utterly disgusted as I am with football in general, the number of “deflated ball” jokes that have hopped around my brain since posting this review is to my embarrassment not measurable with current mathematics.

  7. There’s been a lot of deflated balls in New England this week.

    HEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  8. Liz says:

    You’ve probably already seen this, but Slate had an interview with this author. She’s written some other pretty amusing titles, too, including one with Flo from the Progressive commercials.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/01/06/a_gronking_to_remember_an_interview_with_lacey_noonan_author_of_rob_gronkowski.html

  9. Amanda says:

    @Liz: I did see that! One of my friends actually bought her sasquatch book and kept sending me photos of what was happening.

  10. Laura says:

    Sadly, having seen Gronk’s appearance on Top Chef Boston a few weeks ago ruined him for me. I need a bit of brain with my brawn.

  11. Amanda says:

    @Laura: I know what you mean. CBS This Morning showed a replay of an interview with him last Monday, and all I can say is good thing that boy knows how to catch a ball.

  12. Better than Gronk books: most of Julie Brannagh’s Love and Football series from Avon are 99 cents right now.

  13. Maggie says:

    @Emily: I am thinking that since the book concerns the character’s *fantasies* about him, and not actually him, that the author is on solid ground, legally speaking. Because even apart from the defense that this is clearly fiction or that he’s a public figure (I’m not saying I love either defense, just that they are ones that might be made), if it’s clear the whole time that this is just what Leigh imagines him doing/wishes he would do, the author would probably win any lawsuit.

  14. Lisa Wilde says:

    One of the best reviews I have ever read!!
    **PatsNation!!**Gronk!!**

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