Being Pucked

Bay Rebels, Book 1

De: Rosemary A. Johns

Narrado por: Vivian Bradford

An NHL star player pucked up my life, and now I have one rule: Avoid all ice hockey players.

When I run to my hometown, desperate for a fresh start, I find that it's easier said than done. My dad is the coach of the newest team in the NHL and offers me the job of PR Director to these gorgeous players who are walking disasters.

They say that cocky hockey players are obsessed with their sticks. It turns out that three of them are also obsessed with me.

First, there's the charming, playboy captain. Then there's the scorching-hot twins. One brother is a fighter on the ice but has the heart of a golden retriever when he takes off his skates. The other is intense and tattooed but sweetly protective. Yet they're all hiding secrets that could blow apart the team.

My job is to keep these three out of trouble. Will I break my one rule for them? Their careers depend on winning this season, and my new life depends on beating them at their own game.

Will falling for hockey players puck up my life again? Will my heart be broken or is this my second chance?

From USA Today bestselling author Rosemary A. Johns, Being Pucked is a why-choose, bi-awakening, hockey romance containing forced proximity and found family.

©2024 Rosemary A. Johns (P)2024 Podium Audio

incredible

I was never one for hokey but this book changed my mine. the whole story is incredibly written and the audible was perfect. made me feel like I was watching a movie of ut.5 stars.

Interesting story

I have just recently discovered Hockey Romances and decided to give this one a go since I had read other works by this author. I really enjoyed it. More than I thought I would. It has a great story and enough steam to melt earbuds. I look forward to more in the series.

It was OK until the end

The story is a flirty sometimes too quick to bed why-choose RH Hockey romance with identical twins and a lot of discussions of past childhood and college aged trauma - so much of it it is too much. It includes a psychotic ex, the resolution of which was poorly handled in the book.

I don't know how I missed the twin bit because I shy away from these. If you read anything by twins in response to romances that include twins who are in spicy scenes together - they consider that sort of thing incest. Think about it, would you really? With your sibling?? So I had to suspend my ick a bit to get through it.

There's a lot of jumping to bed before it feels right and the story feels rushed in some ways. I generally would have enjoyed it giving it ~7 out of 10, but a few chapters before the end the abusive, gaslighting, controlling FMC's ex comes into the picture and quite literally lost the plot.
<Spoilers in this paragraph only> Setting aside that his abuse didn't end with the marriage, the way the characters reacted to his threats was completely unrealistic and a weird choice for the author to have made. You know what you don't do with a psychotic ex who has photos of you and is threatening your careers and gets physical and on whom you have receipts? You *don't* trust that you can make a bet on it and work it out on the ice. You go to the police, alert management and the other team, and solve it like adults. The author would have done much better putting the scene somewhere with cameras or having one member of the polycule set up a camera to film some spice as a surprise, that would have caught everything. Would that have been satisfying? Maybe not but it wouldn't have felt like something only someone who is the victim of great abuse would have even pondered.

TL; DR -- cute book though too quick to bed and too much trauma everywhere. Apart from the last closing spicy scene of the book, the whole end of the book and the part with the ex needed serious editing and for someone to have another think about.

Sort of standalone. OK but not good enough to read the rest of the series

I initially thought this was the typical series of standalones and wanted to try the first book before potentially buying the next. I realised, after listening to a few chapters and reading the description of the next books, that the entire series is focused on this group. The writing was good enough and seemed to be going towards some of the stories wrapping up in the first book. I decided to finish it and I don’t regret putting in the time. There were several things I liked, among which the fact that, even though it’s a “why choose “ story, it doesn’t focus on the sex and mechanics of the relationship. I liked the characters, they had some dimension to them and the guys were protective and sweet. The way they get together feels natural and I appreciated the lack of silliness and artificial drama in that relationship.

All that being said, some of the developments lacked believability, like the PhD in PR or fretting about the ex finding out where she is, while working in her hometown, with her father, for a team in the same league as the ex. He should be pretty stupid not to at least consider that she is there. The final behavior of the ex is also absurd and not believable.
I found that many events were dismissed or treated superficially but it is possible that they were left to be treated in another book.
There were a few things that really annoyed me. One is the repeated use of the same name in scenes. If D’Angelo was the center of a scene, we would hear the word “D’Angelo” again and again, even in the same phrase. There are methods through which an author can make it clear who the subject is, without repeating the same word ad nauseam. To me it’s an indication of lack of skill, of amateurism. On the subject of D’Angelo, I find it weird that she keeps calling him that, instead of using his given name. It sounds artificial. Also, the narrator keeps pronouncing the name as if it were “De Angelo”, which is annoying.

Unfortunately this story was a bad knockoff of more popular why choose hockey romances

The writing style is horrendous. And so many things just don’t make any sense. Like what do you mean she has a PHD in Public Relations (a degree that only like a dozen or so schools even offer such a degree) but she’s working at a bar? Then she happens to bump into a guy with a masters in Astrophysics… but he’s a hockey god but apparently one that no one actually wants and he has to prove himself? How the hell does that make any sense.

Her dad, the coach of an NHL team apparently hates nepotism but hires both his kids for director positions. He also says he’s building of team of those deserving second chances but then puts absolutely insane expectations and ultimatums?

Also it’s supposedly a small town but has an NHL team? None of this makes sense.

Also the redundancy is so tedious with how she has to repeat her self and explain every damn detail. (See what I did there?) At point she said some like”I loved how blunt she was. She didn’t beat around the bush or blow smoke up my ass, no, she was direct and to the point.” Sheesh

At one point I also realized that I was approximately 17 minutes into the first sex scene and they hadn’t done a damn thing… hadn’t even taken their close off… it was 99% inner monologue

But I decided to keep going and see if got better. Nope. Should have trust my gut.

Sheesh. This was so bad and obviously just trying to ride the coat tails of other popular why choose and hockey romances. Especially Pucking Around. Hell even the last name of the twins is similar to the characters in Pucking Around. Price and Prince.

When the best parts are that they mention negotiating and a top calls yellow during a scene… yeah you know it’s bad.

Hell even the spicy scenes were mid at best and I seriously wanted to scream at some because they were so bad.

The writing, dialogue, character development… all so bad. The scenario even… sheesh. 🙄 I mean seriously when the whole premise is the FMC saying “I’ll never do X again and then literally within 24 hours doing exactly that!?! And of course we go from 0 to declarations of love and ready to burn the world and their careers down within like what, a week or two? 🙄

This is also one of the books that makes me seriously question if straight girls are ok. Robyn basically falls in love with the first guy after her divorce because he first asks for consent and then seems to give half a shit about her pleasure. Throughout the book she’s just swooning because these guys show just an ounce of concern about her and her pleasure and consent. Like the bar is in hell for straight guys apparently. Seriously, straight ladies are you ok?

Also I’m so sick of books advertising as being kinky and it’s vanilla with a tiny pinch of cinnamon. 😒🤨

And I felt sooo bad for poor Eden. It seems like he’s such an afterthought most of the time. Like I don’t think she ever even had sex with him.

And for the love of god, not every character has to have a horribly tragic background!

I kept hoping this would get better but it didn’t. I definitely won’t be finishing this series.


Audiobook note: JFC if you’re going to have a character that uses Italian nicknames or any foreign languages really… for the love of pasta at least have them learn how to pronounce them correctly. I legit didn’t even realize that he was calling her principessa aka princess in Italian until he said it for like the 4th time! Sheesh you can google things to learn the pronunciation even people!