Hockey players are bad news. Especially ones as hot as he is.

Pucked

With a famous NHL player for a stepbrother, Violet Hall is well acquainted with the playboy reputation of many a hockey star. So of course she isn’t interested in legendary team captain Alex Waters or his pretty, beat-up face and rock-hard six-pack abs. But when Alex inadvertently obliterates Violet’s misapprehension regarding the inferior intellect of hockey players, he becomes much more than just a hot body with the face to match. Suffering from a complete lapse in judgment, Violet discovers just how good Alex is with the hockey stick in his pants.

Violet believes her night of orgasmic magic with Alex is just that: one night. But Alex starts to call. And text. And email and send extravagant – and quirky – gifts. Suddenly he’s too difficult to ignore and nearly impossible not to like. The problem is, the media portrays Alex as a total player, and Violet doesn’t want to be part of the game.

Well, it’s time for another installation of Bookstagram made me do it. I’ve been seeing people rave about the Pucked Series only my feed for months now, so since I recently got Kindle Unlimited, I finally broke down and started it. 

Pucked follows Violet, a recent college graduate working as an accountant for hockey players, and Alex, the captain for the Chicago Hawks, the hockey team Violet’s step-brother was recently traded to. After a bad experience dating a hockey player, Violet has sworn off of them entirely, Until she meets Alex.

Despite his reputation as a player, he charms her. Violet swears that the night they spend together will be just that—one night—but after several weeks of flower deliveries, expensive gifts, and cute texts and phone calls, her resolve wavers.

I have mixed feelings about this first installment in the series of standalone books centered around the hockey players on the Hawks. On the one hand, I enjoyed reading it. It was lighthearted, easy to read, and funny. There was just enough balance between the romance and the hockey. I liked the writing style, and I think that the dual POV really worked for the story.

I liked most of the characters. Alex is a complete hunk and totally smitten with Violet, making the bits written in his POV really fun to read. I also really liked how well Helena Hunting set up future books in the series via the side characters; it’s one reason I will continue to read the series.

On the other hand, I found portions of it kind of cringeworthy. Violet is the definition of a word-vomiter. It’s not something that I usually mind, but between all of the dramatic hating on hockey players (including her own step-brother), degrading other women for being “puck bunnies,” and the borderline-obsessive references to Alex’s genitalia, I found myself getting pretty annoyed with her.

Also, the number of times she used cutesy nicknames for both her own and Alex’s nether regions was a little over the top, in my opinion. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love a good euphemism for manhood, and it’s a hockey romance, so I went into it expecting a “hockey stick” reference or twelve, but “Snuffleupagus” was taking it a little too far.

The cringe-moments aside, I did enjoy Pucked. If you’re looking for something with amazing prose and a love story for the ages, this might not be the book for you. But, if you want a great palette cleanser with a gorgeous male lead who has a secret soft side, crazy on-page chemistry, steamy sex scenes, and some laugh-out-loud moments, I definitely recommend Pucked. It’s a stress-free read, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.