I came to Pucking Sweet having listened to the first two Jacksonville Rays books and carrying expectations formed by Emily Rath's particular brand of sports romance: competent heroines, hockey players with unexpected emotional intelligence, and a plot architecture that rewards patience. At nearly twenty hours, this is the longest book in the series, and Rath is doing the most complicated thing she has attempted so far: weaving together two existing romantic threads into a single story with a third character at the center. I was not sure it would work. It works.
Poppy St. James is the director of public relations for the Jacksonville Rays, a job she takes on under a one-year prove-yourself contract. Her antagonists in the locker room are Lukas Novikov and Colton Morrow, two defensemen whose off-ice behavior is her professional responsibility and her personal irritant. When a personal crisis intersects with a single reckless night, Poppy's carefully managed professional life becomes something considerably more complicated. What follows is a MMF polyamorous romance that takes the premise seriously rather than treating it as a fantasy backdrop.
The book's central achievement is its handling of the polyamorous dynamic. Reviewer giota_the_reader, who noted that why-choose and reverse harem formats are frequently handled disrespectfully, with one participant treated as secondary or not fully on board, called Pucking Sweet a perfect example of how the situation should be navigated. That assessment is accurate. Rath builds the three-person relationship incrementally, giving each connection its own history and its own emotional logic before asking the reader to accept them operating simultaneously. Colton and Lukas have a friendship and history of their own that is genuinely relevant to how they relate to Poppy and to each other, and that foundation makes the polyamory feel organic rather than contrived.
The accidental pregnancy element is handled with more nuance than the trope usually receives. Poppy's response is neither simply terrified nor simply delighted; she has a career, a complicated family situation, and a genuine question about who the father is, and Rath takes the time to make each of those complications real before resolving them. Reviewer theclumsylibrary praised the character development across all three leads as satisfying and noted Rath's gift for weaving multiple voices and plot threads, which is the right observation; the book is structurally ambitious and largely pulls it off.
The Strengths
Desiree Ketchum's narration is crucial to the book's success in audio form. Managing a MMF romance in a single-narrator format requires the kind of vocal distinctiveness that allows listeners to track whose perspective is active without constant orientation. Ketchum achieves this; Lukas and Colton feel like different people in her reading, and Poppy's internal voice has a wry competence that matches the character's professional persona. The nearly twenty hours do not drag because the emotional stakes are consistently calibrated to the length.
Reviewer GigiMC described the book as a chaotic, glorious mess in the complimentary sense, and that description captures the audiobook experience well. There is a lot happening at once, between the polyamory, the pregnancy, a family political subplot, and the locker room professional dynamics, and Ketchum keeps all of it coherent without sacrificing the emotional temperature that makes each thread matter.
Things to Know Before Starting Pucking Sweet
The book rewards familiarity with the Jacksonville Rays series. Characters from the first two books appear with the weight of their own histories, and certain emotional payoffs are more significant for listeners who have followed Lukas and Colton across previous entries. Reviewer Genevieve noted being pleasantly surprised to love this as much as she had loved the series opener, Pucking Around, which suggests that new listeners can find genuine satisfaction here, but the series investment amplifies the experience considerably.
At nineteen hours and forty-four minutes, Pucking Sweet is a significant time commitment. Readers who prefer tightly plotted romance without subplot complexity will find it more sprawling than their preference; those who like romance that earns its length through genuine character development will find the investment justified. The book's rating of 4.4 across sixteen reviews suggests some variability in response; the handful of readers who found it slightly less than the earlier books were likely calibrated to a different kind of sports romance than Rath is writing here.
Recommended For
This audiobook is for readers who enjoy sports romance with real emotional ambition, are comfortable with or curious about MMF polyamory handled respectfully, and are willing to commit to a long-form story that earns its complexity. Prior familiarity with the Jacksonville Rays series is helpful but not strictly required. Those looking for a tightly plotted, short-form sports romance should start elsewhere in the genre; those who want a found-family story about three people building something together in the middle of professional and personal chaos will find Pucking Sweet consistently rewarding.
The Short Version
- Narrator: Desiree Ketchum handles the three-way dynamic with clarity and emotional investment; distinguishing three principal voices across nearly twenty hours requires genuine craft, and Ketchum delivers.
- Subjects: Polyamory handled with genuine care, found family under pressure, identity outside of professional roles
- Tone: Chaotic, emotionally generous, and occasionally overwhelming in the best way
- Bottom line: The most ambitious entry in the Jacksonville Rays series pays off its complexity with emotional depth and a MMF dynamic that treats all three participants as full people.
