My uncle is watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They are endless and eternal, seemingly. But I love my uncle, and he’s letting me stay with him, & there’s only one tv in the whole house. (Actual, unbelievable facts in the year of our lord 2025.) So I am also ‘watching’ the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
I have a sports aversion: It comes from years of being tortured by sports equipment of every shape, size, heft, weight, length & form. If there is a ball in a game? I will get hit by this ball. I will get hit by it if I am participating in the game, or sitting in the stands. I will get hit by it if I am standing a significant distance away, with my back towards the game, watching my sisters while my mother watches my brother play in Little League. I have been hit by hockey sticks – although I have never played hockey – basketballs, bats (both metal & wooden), tennis rackets, bowling balls, lacrosse sticks, and one time a heavy metal basketball hoop tipped over on top of me. Sports and I are unfriendly.
Although I will look up every now and then and make appropriate hockey-related noises, I knew as soon as the Bruins were out, the rest of my participation would be surface level at best. I also am not sure that my uncle would agree that my statements/noises are particularly “appropriate” and/or “hockey-related” as he has not particularly cared for my reviews of
- the music they play in the arenas, and the fact that they play the same songs in the same order and I think that’s weird
- my commentary on the uniforms & how stupid it is that so many of them have colors that are nearly identical and make shit difficult to decipher who is who. Did I decide to root for the Vegas Golden Nights because their costume is the same color as the Bruins and I would remember them? Maaaybe.
- how fast the puck moves, and how the end to end motion makes me a little seasick sometimes.
- The fact that I could definitely be an announcer or a commentator or what have you, because literally all they say is some variation of “What the team who is losing needs to do is make more points” and “What the team that is winning needs to do is make sure that the other team does not make more points” over and over for however long intermission is.
That’s ok: we’re just entertaining ourselves here.
In an effort to entertain myself, but remain seasonally & situationally appropriate, I have started a reread of my favorite ice hockey romance series, The Copper Valley Thrusters by Pippa Grant.
First up is The Pilot & The Puck-Up, which is the story of Josephine/Joey Diamonte (aka Fireball) & Zeus Berger.
One of the comments I saw in a different review of this book was that it was unrealistic for Joey to be a virgin at her age, even though I think Grant does a great job explaining exactly how that has come to be – She’s intimidating as fuck to inferior men, and she wouldn’t want any of them anyways. She never met anybody who was worth changing that situation, so it stayed the same. There are a lot more people in that situation far longer than you might think, according to lived experience and the internet, so I don’t share that commenter’s opinion.
Joey and her kick-assery is by far my favorite aspect of this story. Especially since Zeus loves it just as much as I do. He is not intimidated by her, or her aggression, or her competitive nature: Why would he be when he is exactly the same way? The two of them together are a power couple in a different way than even most romance novels express.
Quote of the book:
And she doesn’t smirk. Not on her face. But I can feel it. She’s taunting me. Somewhere behind those cool-ass aviator sunglasses, somewhere deep in her soul, the woman is mocking and teasing and taunting me.
Next, in Royally Pucked, we follow the adventures of Gracie Diamonte, Joey’s little sister (and trust when I say that having Fireball as a big sister is everything a little sister wants/doesn’t want), and Zeus’ former teammate/spare to a Genovian-ish European throne somewhere, Manning Frey. I like a good grumpy/sunshine trope as well as the next person, but there’s something about two sunshines getting together that just … makes me think that happy endings exist for a reason. As in, if these two perpetually-searching-for-the-best-in-any-given-situation-but-also-caught-up-in-kind-of-a-giant-bind lovebirds can’t figure out how to be with each other, then what chance does anybody really have? Luckily, they both manage to figure their shit out – and along the way, somehow squeeze in an arranged fiancé who wants out, an accidental but happily accepted pregnancy, a monkey that makes many future appearances on the shoulder of Zeus’ brother Ares, an apartment bursting at the seams, and a visit from the royal family, complete with cookies shaped like genitals, which also make appearances in future books. I understand that literally none of that makes sense, but I promise you, it somehow works.
Quote of the book:
Beauty & The Beefcake is book three, and my particular favorite of the series. Ares is … well he’s a lot of things, but almost nobody understands that. Most of the world just sees him as a big, grunting, gif-sending lug. And, while he is indeed that, he’s also so much more, and I couldn’t be happier that he got matched up with his teammate’s sister, Felicity Murphy. When we meet our ‘nobody would put these two together in a million years’ pair, Felicity is moving into the house she and her brother inherited from their grandmother, after a particularly unhappy break-up (which somehow also included those genital shaped cookies, but that is her brother, Nick’s, fault, and we’ll get to him in due time), and Ares is recovering from a nasty sprained ankle, and is looking to move out of the apartment with the book 2 honeymoon phase-ing couple. Hijinks ensue. Ex-boyfriends need to learn lessons; Big brothers also have some lessons that need hammering home; there are lots of hockey games that I start caring about seemingly against my will. Ares learns how to communicate not just through memes, even though memes make exceptional communication tools. Felicity learns a lot about how amazing she really is, because Ares is there to show her. It is sweet, and almost sappy, but I do not care, because it is also hilarious. And includes puppets. In case that’s a deciding factor for you.
Quote of the book:
“You listen,” he says.
“My heart gives bad advice.”
He shakes his head. “Not listening right.”
Which leads us to Charming as Puck, book four, where our ‘hero’ Nick Murphy is about to break up with his friend with benefits, Kami Oakley. He doesn’t really know why, and he’s not actually in favor of it, but Kami is adamant, and so that’s the end. Of course, it’s actually only the beginning, and I’m going to say that this is my least favorite of the series, because it includes a grown-ass man having to learn how to be an adult human with feelings, and I just… do not have the space for even fictional weaponized incompetence, at this particular moment in my life. Kami is the sweetheart in her friend group (which includes Felicity of the previous book, which is how she and Nick met), and she’s been settling for the (apparently mind-blowingly good) sex with Nick for about a year in the lead up to this book. But a phone call from him assuming that she’ll deal with the fallout from his teammate’s lates wild-animal-involving prank, and it’s Kami’s breaking point. I’m here for that part, you better believe. The rest of the book is Nick figuring out that he was taking advantage of Kami’s kindness (and skillset, and memory, and caring capabilities), and working out how to be less of an asshole and actually show up in his life for the people he supposedly cares for. This is, admittedly, a very negative take on Nick as a character, and I can only say that apparently both Kami & I have hit our limits with this kind of nonsense. And IF ONLY non-fictional men were as easy to acknowledge their shortcomings as Nick was, I probably would’ve enjoyed this one a whole lot more.
Quote of the book (I’m gonna cheat and add two, which are only a few pages apart at the very beginning):
“It’s not his fault, Sugarbear,” I tell the cow. “He doesn’t know anything other than being the center of the universe, and he’s never even had to work hard for most of it because he’s hot and naturally talented. But he can’t be the center of my universe anymore. I need to matter too.”
“I thought Kami and I had something simple and easy and good. Apparently, I was wrong. So. Fucking. Wrong.”
Last up, book five: I Pucking Love You, with our sadly named heroine, Muffy Periwinkle, who runs the even less unfortunately named dating service Muff Matchers. The groans I groaned. The hero is a not-yet-but-soon-to-be-reformed-rake of the team, Tyler Jaeger, and the plot is a series of “romance reasons” required interactions. Most hilariously, Muffy needs an escort to a funeral, Tyler is her eager escort, but only because he was not previously informed it was a funeral – hijinks ensue. Not since Grandma Mazur (of the Stephanie Plum series) have funerals enjoyed quite so many hijinks. In the end, I enjoyed Muffy & Tyler, although some of their supporting cast – most notably Muffy’s mother – don’t exactly fit the ‘supporting’ categorization, in my book.
Quotes of this book (bc I cheated again, since I’m one of five sisters, and I wanted to)
Dammit. This is the moment having four sisters has trained me for. And you know what? For the first time in my life, I’m grateful as hell.
But I will date her. I’m gonna date the shit out of her. Muffy Periwinkle’s gonna know she’s worth something. Whether she likes it or not.
I give books 1,2,& 5 4 stars; book 4 3 stars; and book 3 5 stars, just to confuse us all.