Emily Rath

This book should actually be three books. It was very nearly brought down by its excess. It is like when you eat a hot Krispy Kreme and it is magical, nearly orgasmic. Then you reason that they won't be as good when they are no longer hot, and after all they are light as air and not terribly substantial, so you eat a second one. And then you tear off a little piece of the third and suddenly you are rocketed from delicious decadence to nausea and encroaching headache (not that such a thing show more has ever happened to me.) If this were two books, or better yet three books, I think we would have a 5-star on our hands, but as it is it is a 3.5 rounded up.

Briefly, this is the story of Rachel, a newly minted sports medicine doctor who is also the daughter of one of the most famous rock stars in the world (because of course she is) who earns a fellowship working with a team in the NHL. By-the-bye you meet her friends and family and her three lovers, two of whom are players on this team. There is a lot of sex, there are some hurdles, there is a tiny bit of eating and sleeping, there are injuries and interactions with team members, and did I mention a lot of sex? The story such as it is revolves around the burgeoning relationships (which are surprisingly sweet) and the struggle to build a life as a nontraditional family unit. When my son was in 3rd and 4th grade he had a classmate whose parents were a thruple of sorts (they were actually 2 couples with one shared partner and the other partners appeared to really kind of hate one another.) I am not gonna lie, it was a very liberal school with a number of kids with parents in relationships with same-sex partners and at least two parents who identified as trans, but all the other parents talked about the throuple A LOT. I mention this because it is indeed hard out there for a quadrouple, and that struggle provides a pretty sold narrative arc on its own. There are also subplots about the parties adjusting to sharing their love, athletes hiding injuries and living after injury derails a career you have worked for your whole life, floating under the radar when you have famous parents, and a few other things. I never felt bored, and I never felt like it was only about sex even though there is no question that there is really truly a lot of sex.

Lest you think I am overdramatizing the problem with the length of this book, I listened to the audio and it is 25-hours-long. Yes, 25! For comparison, Great Expectations is 18,5 hours. 25 hours of 3-ways and then 4-ways is just a lot. It is numbing. It starts to feel a little A Clockwork Orange. On the flipside, this is well written, it is funny and emotionally affecting, and within the world of erotica it has unusually good character development. Oh, and the sex is surprisingly sexy and sweet and unsurprisingly it is often absolutely filthy (in a good way.) Rath is perhaps a bit too much of a size queen, but for the most part the sexy times are fun (and frequent.) I really liked that there are defined one-on-one relationships in addition to each group member's relationship with the group as a whole and that it is not all about each man's relationships with Rachel, but also their sexual and nonsexual relationships with one another. Rath makes polyamory seem fun, if really truly exhausting.

I don't want to beat a dead horse with respect to the length of the book, but I took a break in the middle to read a more traditional romance, and I do not think I have ever taken a break from a romance to read another romance. One of the fun things about reading romance is that immersive feeling, but I lost that here because I was immersed too long and it started to feel like drowning. And there are some natural breaking points here to turn this into three books (there is the development of the thruple, the introduction of a fourth partner and further development of a M-M romance, and then the coming out as poly.) I will definitely read book 2 in the series, but not right away. In fact, I think I need a break from hockey romance for a bit (a genre that, perhaps surprisingly, I really like.)

I do truly recommend this, but maybe plan to spread out the read -- one sec, that sounds dirty -- plan to dip in and out -- one sec, that sounds dirty too -- just read the thing in parts and I expect you will have some fun show less

(I figured it was time for me to give this book my review treatment)
Daughter of a famous rocker lands a job with the NHL's newest Hockey team. Then she starts collecting men like pokémon (almost), and god damn I love her for it.

Overall reco: I joke but this book has rewritten my brain. I know we all throw that term around lightly but seriously. I got a tattoo because of this book. I'm making a cross stitch to give to the author when I see her at a signing. I love this universe. This is one show more of those you either hate it or love it. I hope that you love it, but if not, that is totally okay.

“It’s not fair. He’s got all the smarts, and that weird surfer vampire vibe, and a kinky ribbed cock. How’s a guy supposed to compete with a surfing, sun-kissed Edward Cullen?” - Jake

Plot: 5/5
Spice: 5/5
Characters: 5/5

Is there a DR in the house..?(plot)
Most of the plot revolves around the getting together of 4 people who need to keep things on the downlow, who are really fucking bad at doing that. Honestly. In most romance novels the driver of the story is the progression of the relationship(s) and while that is no different here, there are adult like consequences and things that happen beyond just the dance of falling in love. The story flows easily in the story and I never felt like a miscommunication trope hung on for longer than an few pages, which is good. Characters can have misunderstandings and it not feel like a chore. Fuck, Jake basically has most of the miscommunication issues in the book and that is an OK character flaw because it's communicated to the reader well and not super blown out of proportion.

Double King beds baby..(spice)
I will not lie, this book is SPICY. There are HUGE sections of this book that are just fucking spice. Especially since one of them doesn't seem to have a fucking refractory period and can go for hours. #illmari4life. This book will test your limits on how much spice you can stomach. Are you used to ACOTAR and like ICEBREAKER? Okay, those are like 1 and 2 on my chart. This is one of the few non-monster level 5 spice books. I reread it twice recently, I'm not off. This could be a level 6 spice.
There IS PLOT in the spice though. Character discoveries, walls breaking down, opening up of hearts. The spice isn't just a wham bam thank you ma'am.

I wish they were real..(characters)
There is no way my lame ass would know them, but they feel like friends. Each character is different and interesting and there is so much going on and so much to connect too. Sometimes in the big poly groups the characters really personify their 'pole' and then never get off of it. While that happens a bit here, the characters really expand more and more across the rest of the novella's and books. I loved these characters and then the novella's just deepened that love, and each book since then just expands the wall. show less

The bright pink PR director learns an important lesson that it is possible to be too nice. Colt learns that he's too Leo to function and that is totally ok. Lukas gets a treadmill (Don't @ me, I love him, it's a joke).

Overall reco: If I could give this book 6 stars I would, fucking masterclass. I am a Jacksonville Rays super fan, I will not hide the fact that Pucking Around changed my life. I loved Pucking Wild, not as much as PA and was a little worried (even through the hype) that I wasn't show more going to love PS. I peaked with my love of Mars but I was gunna read this for glimpses into THAT relationship. I was so.. so wrong. I love Novy. I do. I need to go out and get my tattoo amended so I can add his and colt's numbers. But really.. Novy. If you like any of the other PA stuff even a little, just read it.
I want to add, I highlighted so much of this book I feel like I could have highlighted the whole thing. I don't do it that much, usually just funny lines, things that stick out. I have almost 80 highlights, and will probably would have had more if I have spend the last 20% freaking the fuck out

sorry I couldn't pick just one quote..

In the meantime, I get to watch these two circle each other like sexy cats in a bag, which is highly entertaining.

"I didn’t know I was looking for you until I found you. Now that I have, I’m not letting you go."

Yeah, eat a dick, Rowan.

Plot: 5/5
Spice: 4/5
Characters: 5/5

Secret, Secret, I've got a secret...(plot)
So, the fun of this book is that we've sort of gotten glimpses of this relationship from the others books. This one starts just before PA and ends somewhere towards the end of PW. We've gotten hints in other books. I knew Poppy was pregnant before getting into it because of what happens in PW. And that is fine. But there was SO, SO MUCH that we didn't know. The story itself wasn't crazy but was believable and compelling. I wanted to know what happened, and then I got the added bonus of seeing the Prices's try to sneak around when everyone fucking knew. The stuff with he family was rough, but I was so happy when Poppy called out her father for also enabling her mother. Sure, maybe he didn't know what mommy dearest was doing, but that doesn't help and he's complicit by inaction. I felt so good for Poppy to not accept his lame "I didn't know" because that is BS.

Ice machines, elevators, unlocked storage closets...(spice)
So not a 5. But honestly, could have been. The spice chart is hard, alright?
Emily Rath is a fantastic spice writer, one of the best and one of my favorites. It never feels like too much or too little. I almost feel like the next Pucking Ever After is going to have so many scenes of them as this almost felt like it was being held back a little. The scene with Lukas and Poppy with the Ice Machine had this vibe that I don't think we saw with Lukas again, and I think that is because we were seeing Poppy really coming into her own and finding herself and that led to a lot of changes in the bedroom for her. I would love to see THAT Lukas come back out. I was in love with Lukas from a few chapters in, but that whole scene changed me from a Mars girlie to a Novy girly.

Poppy, Lukas, and Cole..(characters)
When I first read the graphic that showed Emily's plans for the books I felt the least excited about this book. I liked Poppy, but didn't know much about Novy and Morrow andjust felt like this would probably be the weakest book for me. That Poppy wouldn't be my cup of tea (I liked her.. but enough to read a whole book about her? I wasn't sure) and that I didn't know these boys enough. I was going to read it to get the Prices's love story but from a different angle. Fuck, was I wrong.
From the go, Poppy was not what I thought, I immediately felt her struggles. And then Lukas had these little fucking lines with Cole and I immediately saw the broken joker that feels like he's not worth of anything. Cole took the longest to get to love. I fell in love with him for his interaction with Lukas. Jake and Caleb? Caleb and Illmari? Move over. Cole and Lukas, best friends now

my only nitpicky thing..
is that we didn't get enough Lukas/Cole time. We got a LOT of it and I wanted more. But I trust Emily Rath. I've seen what she does in the novellas. I've seen how something in a novella can just explode (for example, my tattoo is a reference to a chapter in the novella called "no exit" and "The Dentist" is something that is constantly talked about in the fandom). So I'm WAITING. WAITING and HOPING for all the stuff we have yet to get. She doesn't leave stuff out without a reason. Maybe more in Book 4? Since it looks like we are about to run into heavy overlap. show less

My goodness, a fantasy based on Finnish mythology? Gimme, gimme, gimme.

I am not an expert on Finnish folklore – I did read a children’s version of Kalevala, but I don’t remember much (except for Väinämöinen the legendary hero and a magic mill called Sampo). So I really liked how the book dropped me right into the magic and never let go. The author really wanted to tell this story, and it showed. The writing style is very obviously influenced by folklore, with the literary mixed in show more – they blend together in the joy of storytelling. I’ve learned a lot about Finnish mythology! (Note to self: don’t mess with Finnish gods. I’m serious, don’t do it.)

Siiri and Aina are best friends, just living their quiet lives in the village. There are grim things in the background, though. The Swedish colonizers are coming, bringing their religion with them. The old Finnish gods have withdrawn, it seems. The people are plagued by disease and untimely deaths. And it seems that something or someone is kidnapping young women… This monster has taken Aina.

Siiri’s quest to save her friend has begun. The story continues in alternating POV chapters – when I came to the end a Siiri chapter, I said “no-no-no, give me more Siiri”; when I came to the end of an Aina chapter, I said “no-no-no, let’s not change POV”. In other words, we have two awesome characters to follow.

Siiri is so stubborn, so strong, so impulsive, so fierce. She has faith, love, courage. What a journey she makes! I loved her interactions with gods! There is also a lot of darkness, heartbreak, violence, gore and death.

“You know, in Mummi’s stories, the women are always waiting for things to happen to them. […] This is a new kind of story.”

Aina is in a scary, creepy, cruel and horrible place. Ah, she is clever, honourable and resilient. She finds solutions and she finds hope. Aina has her own superpowers. “Everyone should have a good pair of socks, even a goddess.”

It was great to see Aina and Siiri grow, understand who they are and what they are capable of. I did not expect to see a book with a love triangle and a Persephone/Hades theme I could get behind. So well done!

I did not much care for the “evil Christian priests” subplot. It felt simplistic, with a bit of hammering the message in. On the other hand, there isn’t much nuance and complexity in religious fanaticism. But I wish I didn’t have to see the expression “bring back the true religion”. All religions are “true”, in a sense. And I thought the characters were against zealotry? This felt like a false note. The characterization faltered slightly at times, as if for a short while, the people forgot how to fit in the puzzle of the book.

Hence the 4 stars, even though I considered going higher. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot and I am glad I read it! There were many 5 star-worthy chapters that took my breath away. I’d love to read the sequel.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc! show less