Teagan Hunter

Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.
Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.
Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.
Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.
Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.

Picture this: A headstrong, stubborn, often scatterbrained, “cursed” woman keeps a very messy car. Food wrappers, changes of clothes, shoes, junk.

Now picture this: She offers the grumpy, rigid, stern older brother of Cursed Girl’s best friend a ride without stopping to show more consider the usual state of the interior of her car. As she’s scooping things up and jamming things in her purse, what’s seared into his brain is:

Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.

He keeps thinking it over and over and over, and every time it pops into his brain you laugh more, until you’re snorting, wiping your eyes, and certain this is another Teagan Hunter masterpiece you will love and read – just like his brainworm – over and over and over.

This could be my entire review; I could stop right here and just tell you to drop whatever you are doing and run, don’t walk, to get a copy of Grumpily Ever After. At first I thought while I knew I would love the story, maybe this was going to be one of those books with characters you just aren’t going to like all that much. Noah, even though, big, tall, strong and handsome is almost too negative and cranky to bother with, Izzy seems like the spoiled little sister who will do anything to get her way, and Odette, Izzy’s BFF literally forever is too hung up on that family curse and seems immature and annoying. But I forgot momentarily who wrote this book and that Teagan Hunter never, ever, ever disappoints. In fact, she always delivers gloriously and Grumpily Ever After is yet another example of that.

Izzy’s about to be married to the long-time love of her life and has the proverbial stars in her eyes. Love is a sore subject for Noah and Odette, though. He barely survived a disastrous marriage and divorce and hasn’t seemed happy since. He’ll tell you he doesn’t believe in love or happy-ever-after before you can even ask. Odette has had a wedding wish list since she was twelve years old but she, and most of the women in her family, believe the Chambers Family Curse is a real thing and if you or someone you know dares to fall in love it will end badly. Odette has proof: her rapidly failing wedding planner business. She’s talented, creative, and perfectly, uniquely plans each wedding, but something always goes wrong and she’s certain it’s the curse. What else could cause such a wide range of freakish disasters and ruin her reputation so thoroughly? Planning the perfect wedding for Izzy is her last hope. She’s had some interest from future bridal couples but it’s all contingent on the success of this venture.

That’s where Noah comes in. Izzy and Odie want to hold the wedding in the barn on the property of Noah and Ezra’s Stick Taps cidery. It’s the perfect venue. The answer is No, no, no, no, no. Except Izzy always get her way with her big brother. So Noah starts making repairs and renovating and Odie starts arranging and rearranging and changing things in his beloved space. They’ve bickered for years and it’s only increased with their close proximity now.

But there are a couple of great, big elephants in the room, namely Odie’s crush on Noah since she was 16-years-old, and Noah’s growing attraction to grown-up Odette. One thing leads to another, but it’s harmless, right? Nothing serious. Nothing long-lasting. It may be for different reasons, but neither of them has those Izzy-stars-in-the-eyes. So why go public, why tell Izzy or anyone else? They’re discreet, no one will guess.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Teagan Hunter is a master at this. Noah and Odie may think they know what they’re doing and where this is going, but they are wrong. So hilariously, tenderly, romantically, sexily wrong. Grumpily Ever After is sweet, sad, surprising and totally, completely satisfying. I loved it and cannot wait for the next book in this delightful series.

I received an advance copy of this book with no constraints or expectations. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. show less

The Seattle Serpents is quite the hockey team. By Top Shelf, Book Five in the series, we’ve gotten to know the major players pretty well: Lawson the golden retriever, Keller the dick, Hutch the grump and team captain, Hayes the protective one, Fox the good boy, and the old man Locke. By now we’ve seen most of them pair off and find their happy-ever-afters, wives, fiancées, children, lives outside of hockey. All except Kemp and Locke. Kemp is the grump; he’s a good teammate and show more participates in their goofy chat group, but no way is a relationship in the future for him. Maybe never say never, but that’s for later. The focus in Top Shelf is on Gavin Barry Douglas Whitlocke. And while Gavin is all for family and HEAs, he wants to win a Stanley Cup before he retires or before hockey retires him. He’s 37-years-old and his focus has to be on hockey, hockey, and only hockey.

We’ll see that fate doesn’t really care about Gavin’s plans or focus. After a game in New York rather than go out with the team he goes to a bar to have a drink and unwind. There’s a younger woman in there being harassed by an unruly patron and Gavin steps in. Cue the music and hearts and flowers. Something just clicks. They talk and walk and talk some more. She shares more than she ever intended: after only 6 months of marriage her divorce is officially final today, her husband cheated on her, dismissed her, made her feel so unimportant, such a failure. The night at the bar was supposed to be a celebration but it didn’t feel like that. It felt awful – until she met Gavin. What is really just a one-night stand feels like so much more, with him even telling her “you’re mine now” but when he wakes up in the morning she’s long gone. They didn’t even exchange contact information. But no way is it out of sight, out of mind. He can’t stop thinking about her. But then he reminds himself about what his focus needs to be. He just chalks it up to a good memory and a lot of regret.

Until the night at a party at his team captain’s house, Hutch’s evil (according to him) stepsister Vanessa shows up on his doorstep, unable to cope with events in New York and needing a place to stay. Hutch doesn’t exactly welcome her with open arms, but he’s not the only one experiencing strong emotions: Vanessa is Gavin’s Nessa from that night months ago.

Vanessa pretends she doesn’t recognize Gavin, but as steamy-romance-book-luck would have it, she just happens to get a job bartending where the team often hangs out when in town, and in the blink of an eye there’s a little breathless encounter in the hallway. Just to make things more complex, Kemp sees them, but things can go no further, anyway. Siblings are off limits; Vanessa is trying to rebuild her life and find out just who she really is again – and Gavin has his FOCUS.

Famous last words. Hutch’s fiancée Auden is going to have their baby soon and Hutch still doesn’t really want Vanessa around so she needs to find a place to live – quickly. When Auden goes into labor and Gavin ends up driving Vanessa home from the hospital he comes up with the perfectly logical plan for Vanessa to move in with him. He’s on the road half the time, he needs someone to take care of his pet turtles, he’s got the space, he’s just helping her out until she finds a place. Just friends, just friends, just friends. Yeah, that’s going to work. For about one road trip’s worth of time.

The connection between them is electric. He’s gentle and considerate and caring. He really does want to help her because she deserves to be happy; to get over the way her jerk of an ex left her feeling. She feels so safe, so cherished with him. For the first time in his life he’s found something that is becoming more important than hockey. She’s eleven years younger than him, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except how she makes him feel. But what about Hutch? Hutch and Vanessa haven’t gotten along since their parents got married. There’s no good time to tell him, so they put it off. Kemp keeps his mouth shut but warns that this could tear the team apart. And secrets? Well, it’s really hard to keep them.

Top Shelf was so entertaining, so engrossing, so enthralling that once I picked it up I just couldn’t put it down. A perfect blend of . . . everything. The romance is so tender it makes your heart throb. Their attraction is steamy, scorching, perfect. Gavin is a good man from a close family, and that’s just what Nessa needs. She was with Neal the Jerk for five years and he dragged the divorce out another year and a half. Now he’s having a baby with his cheatee and getting remarried. Vanessa doesn’t love him anymore, but he took so much from her: her self-esteem, her confidence, her belief in making a future for herself. And Gavin wants to give that all back to her, piece by piece. It’s romantic and hot and fun, and any time spent with the Seattle Serpents is a joy. I received an advance copy of Top Shelf. I loved it, love this series, can’t wait to see if Kemp might have his non-belief in HEAs shaken in the next book. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. show less

I love author Teagan Hunter’s books. Each and every one of them. Humor and heat, hockey team camaraderie and shenanigans, difficult decisions and people you desperately want to see find their way together. Match Penalty is one of those books and it’s terrific. True love and a storybook marriage that unfortunately took a turn into the not-so-happy side of Fairytale Lane.

Keller is the last man standing in the Serpents Singles Club, all the other members having found their true love and in show more committed relationships. He’s the grumpy one who doesn’t date and never talks about marriage. What they don’t know, however, is that Keller isn’t actually single either. The fact that he’s married with an absent wife no one has ever heard of, let alone met, probably accounts for some of that grumpiness. It’s been three years without her. Three long, sad years. Not much contact. No move towards divorce but no reconciliation either. He can’t go on like this and his goals for the year are short and to the point: win the Cup with the Seattle Serpents and get his wife back. They may be short and to the point, but while hard work, teamwork and a little luck might achieve the first one, that second goal looks pretty impossible right now.

Chloe Clover fell in love with Callum Keller during college and never fell out of it. Their love story is so sweet, so heartwarming you almost can’t believe anything could have gone wrong. But as Keller’s career rapidly advanced Chloe began to feel lost, that while she fully supported him she was losing some part of her own identify, afraid she couldn’t be the wife he needed, afraid to let him down, but afraid to speak up so maybe they could talk it out. Ashamed by what she considered her own failing and weakness, she went for a short educational opportunity overseas that got extended and extended until she finally said she wasn’t coming back, leaving Callum blindsided, shocked, confused and heartbroken.

Now Chloe is in Seattle, but before she can let him know she’s in town, he sees her in the bar where the team hangs out – with another man. Once again blindsided, but this time enraged, he confronts them, learning that this is a job interview. Doesn’t calm him down too much, but it does lead to them talking and spending time together. Turns out neither has “moved on” – there’s been no cheating, no other people involved and they still love each other, but they also still don’t how to express what they think, what they want, what they need. These two really need to learn how to share their feelings.

Author Hunter makes it supremely enjoyable to spend time with Chloe and Callum as they work to get back on that true-love-happy-ever-after-path, putting up obstacles for them to work through and ‘aha’ moments for them to finally realize what is really important and how that might all work. Through it all are the delightful group chats, the almost relentless teasing and matchmaking of the team members who see what Chloe and Keller are dragging their feet about. Throw in the tender, sweet moments, the funny parts, and the sexy bits and you’ve got one satisfying book.

I received an advance copy of Match Penalty. It was fun working my way through this series and this was the perfect way to wrap it up. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I have all of this author’s books and recommend it without hesitation I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. show less

Empty Net by author Teagan Hunter is the fourth book in the Seattle Serpents hockey team series. While I have enjoyed other books Hunter has written, this is the first book of this series I’ve read, and apparently according to team member Lawson, Keller is the dick, Hutch is the grump, Hayes is the protective one, Locke is the old man, and Fox is the good boy. I don’t know about the rest of them, but yes, Arthur Fox is the good boy. He’s a fine Southern gentleman, sweet, direct and show more good to his core. Also concerned about his performance as the goalie for the Serpents expansion team and getting them to the playoffs. He dates, or rather has encounters, but is a bit of a loner and not interested in a relationship. Been there, done that.

Lilah Maddison is so worn down by her family that she can’t utter a word to her mother without first thinking it over 50 times for fear of the consequences. It’s just easier to go along than to suffer through more cutting criticism and being told what a failure and disappointment she is and always has been. She has encounters, too, and all her relationships have failed. Her self-confidence is low, low, low and going along again is what she’s doing when Fox overhears her tell her mother that of course she has a date for a family event. Just wait, you’ll see. Except she doesn’t have a date and now she’ll have to confess and suffer more consequences, unless . . . she can beg someone to be her fake date.

She doesn’t even have to beg. Fox’s inner gentleman leads him to take the phone out of her hand and introduce himself to her mother as Lilah’s date. She tries to talk him out of it, to tell him just what he would be letting himself in for with her rich, snobbish, horrible family, but he insists. Once they are actually there he realizes she’s right – they are in fact horrible – and he feels an overwhelming desire to protect her. Telling her parents they are dating doesn’t seem like enough to him, so he tells them they’re engaged. Well, that simplifies things, doesn’t it?

Lilah’s mother immediately goes into wedding planning mode, assuming Lilah is either lying or having a fling or something and that this relationship will fizzle – after all, how could she actually bring someone so crude and beneath them as a hockey player into the family – and Lilah will then marry someone suitable, chosen by her family, of course.

It all quickly becomes hilariously complex. It’s a fake engagement, but it feels so real. He can relax and be himself around her and she has never been so relaxed with anyone else, not even her best friend Auden. It can’t be real but what if it was? Nope, that’s a dream, dreams are risky, don’t go there. Then fake fiancé turns into fake fiancé with benefits, and it’s pretty special. Not to mention his hockey game becomes almost flawless.

Teagan Hunter writes the funniest, sweetest, sexiest stories around, with a thread of serious issues expertly woven in. There’s a lot to laugh about, but there is also a lot, like the way Lilah’s parents treat her, that will break your heart. They spend time together at first to be seen, for the engagement to be seen as real, but soon they want to learn more about each other and the dates Arthur plans for them are surprising and thoughtful and wonderful. He stands right beside her in dealing with her family, and she makes him wonder if it really is possible to have the kind of strong, long-lasting relationship his parents have.

Empty Net is an enjoyable, satisfying, heartwarming read, with tender moments, heated moments, funny moments. Lilah and Arthur’s developing relationship is a joy to watch, and every time they falter or misunderstand or fear things won’t work you want to reach right into the story and tell them everything will be okay. The characters are all well-written and multi-dimensional, the plot is strong and smooth, and the spicy bits are just wow. Empty Net worked just fine as a standalone but I am intrigued enough by the rest of the characters to go back and read the first three books in the series. And eagerly await whatever author Hunter gives us next. I received an advance copy of Empty Net. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it without hesitation. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. show less