Shannon’s Reads: Pucking Around by Emily Rath

So I just finished the very spicy polyamorous Hockey Romance Pucking Around… and it’s a fun romance book that was probably the spiciest book I ever read…and while I enjoyed it there were a few problems I had with it.

The book overall is pretty funny and it keeps the humor throughout the whole book- which I enjoyed. I also don’t think I’ve read a book with a bisexual man as a main character that is openly bisexual and is shown loving both men and women. Which I enjoyed reading- I’m happy that a bestselling booktok book has great queer representation. Especially when books with queer representation are being banned in some states… so Yayy! So that’s what I like about the book.

What I didn’t like as much about this book is that… there are almost too many spicy scenes where this didn’t really have much of a plot to it at all. Towards the beginning of the book they just had a lot of Man Pain between Caleb and Jake and jealousy and it didn’t really develop their character or their relationship with Rachel or each other… and then she gets with Ilmari halfway through the book and then she just seems to be more interested in him than the other guys… which seems like it wasn’t planned for. I feel like she should have ended up more with Jake than anyone because Jake is kind of her soul mate…. It just felt like it was off.

Also the book really lacked character development. Other than them all loving the relationship they were in and and loving hockey and each other… there isn’t too much more to the characters. There’s a little bit at the end of the book but that’s kind of it.

I also just want to mention that I didn’t finish reading the interview they had at the end with the guys. It was just basically a recap of everything that happened in the book… which I just read. So… that was kind of too boring for me to bother with. Also this is a long book- it’s over 500 pages and it didn’t really need to be that long with how little character development and plot we get.

This all sounds really negative and I don’t really mean to be that negative because I did enjoy this book and the characters- I just kind of wish there was more too it… and I had some excitement at the beginning because I liked the dynamic between Rachel, Jake and Caleb… and I didn’t like Ilmari at first but he did kind of grow on me. I just wished the rest of the book had the banter and dynamic that the first few chapters had. I also think all the guys are good book boyfriends too so it wasn’t bad. I enjoyed the book overall and I’m going to continue on with the series, I have other books by Emily Rath too because she also writes fantasy so… I hope her fantasy worlds are a little bit better but overall this wasn’t my favorite book. I haven’t read a great book so far this year… but I’m hopeful Mickey 7 might be my first 5 star read! I like it a lot so far!

Bye!

-Shannon