Pucked Over - Helena Hunting (Pucked #3)

So, I haven't actually read the first two books in this series, but another member of the Unapologetic Romance Readers group mentioned she was enjoying it, so when this particular one went on sale I got it.  And then I needed a sports romance for my romance reading challenge (more information here) so I dug it out of the dusty depths of my Kindle.  The series basically follows a bunch of NHL players as they fall in love.  The player in this volume is Randy Ballistic, recently traded to Chicago (which is the team that the main characters of the first two books play for) from New York.  Our heroine is Lily LeBlanc, a Canadian figure skating coach who lost her Olympic dream when the money necessary to go for the trials dried up.  Lily is friends with the heroines from the first two books, which should tie everything together nicely for those who read them.  As someone who didn't read them, there were a lot of characters and relationships to keep track of early on in the book, but I eventually straightened them out.

Anyway, while Lily is staying at her friend Sunny's boyfriend's cabin (with Sunny) after an awful camping trip in which Lily breaks up with her boyfriend, Randy is also there (being teammates with Sunny's boyfriend) and defends Lily against some asshole comment Benji (the ex) makes.  So she kisses him.  And then he walks in on her naked, and they make out and he gives her tons of orgasms.  (This "Lily gets tons of orgasms" thing is ongoing in the book.  All he basically has to do is look at her and she's on the edge; a touch and it's over.)  But then Lily sees him with pictures of other girls (puck bunnies) so she defaces all of his underwear and then avoids him for like two months, until they run into each other AGAIN and start a sort of "friends with benefits" relationship except they're not really friends so it's more like "acquaintances with benefits" or probably even more like just plain old "fuck buddies."  Randy doesn't want a relationship and figures that Lily just got out of one so he tells her to tell him if it stops being fun and starts getting serious.  He doesn't want to catch feelings, after all.  Though of course they both eventually do.

This book grew on me but mostly in the last 30%.  For the first 70% of the book, it's mostly just the two of them making out, screwing, or masturbating to thoughts of each other.  Let me tell you, I am so sick of the words "dick" and "magic marble" after reading this book.  It just seem so...crass.  And though I haven't read the other books, I find myself concerned for Violet, another of Lily's friend group, because the few instances that didn't feature Randy and Lily having sex normally featured Violet getting plastered.  And even after the two of them start to realize they have feelings, there's very little building of what could be a relationship.  It's all based on just sex.  Hunting also tries very hard to be over the top in her humor, especially with references to Lily's "beaver" and having the girls talk extensively about blow jobs and such, but it wasn't funny at all.  I'm sure this type of group of girls exists, somewhere, but I've never encountered a single one of their species, so I was left eyeing them with a bit of distaste.  Good for them that they enjoy their sexual relationships and are open with each other, but that is literally all they ever talk about.

So, overall the book didn't work for me.  It gets a bit sweeter in the end, but a good dose of sugar is what this book really needed overall, and I found myself really rolling my eyes at the endless sex and wishing that the end would just take me.

2 stars out of 5.