College hockey romance runs on a small set of reliable engines, and J.J. Mulder wires two of them together in the opening chapters of Shots on Net: a roommate advertisement, and a goalie whose eligibility clock is running down. Carter Morgan III has no use for South Carolina University beyond the ice under it. Zeke Cassidy needs somewhere to live. Iggy Toma fronts the Podium Audio edition, eight hours and fifty-one minutes of it, and the audiobook opens the SCU Hockey series with a slow burn that takes its time in exactly the way the premise promises. What the final stretch does with all that patience is a separate conversation.
Zeke Thaws a Guarded Goalie in Increments
Mulder builds the book around proximity rather than conflict. Carter is aloof by default and guarded about why; Zeke moves in expecting an ordinary lease and gets a housemate who thaws in increments. The hockey is not decoration either. Carter plays net, and the position carries its own loneliness, one player standing apart from the run of play with the whole game eventually arriving at him. The looming end of his college career gives the romance a deadline it did not have to invent, which is the smartest structural decision in the book: the clock belongs to the sport, so the pressure never feels imported for the sake of a third act.
Before anything else, one oddity deserves naming. A response posted four months ahead of the audio release is not a reaction at all. It reproduces the publisher's plot summary almost word for word, down to the phrasing about Zeke answering an advertisement for a roommate and finding Carter Morgan III behind the door. Whoever posted it was quoting the blurb rather than reporting an experience of the book, which leaves the genuinely evaluative pool smaller than the raw response count suggests. Worth knowing before you weigh any average attached to this title.
Consider the statistic the title borrows. A shot on net is an attempt that reaches the goal, counted whether or not it goes in; the stat sheet records the try rather than the result. That is a precise description of what Carter spends the book doing. He has decided Zeke wants nothing past friendship, and he keeps hoping anyway, quietly, without a plan and without a move. Naming a romance after the metric that logs unsuccessful attempts is a small joke with real feeling underneath it.
Eight Hours Built From Small Loving Gestures
Posting in March 2026, one reader gets at the book's actual engine. They single out the banter and the jokes first, then move to Carter's backstory: rich parents who did not care enough about him to hug him, leaving a young man that reader describes as 'love starved' by the time Zeke turns up. What follows is not a grand gesture but a run of small ones. Zeke waits up after games. Zeke cooks. Carter, in that account, has no idea what to do with any of it and adores him for it regardless. Care rather than heat is the currency this romance trades in.
Eight hours and fifty-one minutes is a generous runtime for a campus romance, and Mulder spends it. The pacing is unhurried by design: friendship first, established properly, then a slow accumulation of evidence that both men want something neither will name out loud. Listeners who treat slow burn as a euphemism for stalling should know this one earns the label honestly, with actual scenes doing the work instead of interior monologue circling the same realization for three chapters.
Series position matters too. The record lists Shots on Net as the first SCU Hockey entry, which sets expectations correctly: a campus, a team, and a roster of secondary characters who read as future leads rather than furniture. A first book in a college sports series carries a specific obligation, to make the place itself worth returning to, and the rink, the shared apartment, and the rhythm of a season all get enough attention to satisfy it.
Two Reviewers Flag the Same Abrupt Ending
The lowest score attached to this title belongs to a reader who liked the setup, liked Zeke especially, and then ran into two problems. The first is line-level: grammatical and usage issues distracting enough to pull them out of the story, the sort of thing basic editing would have caught. The second is structural, and it will decide whether this book works for you. The story, in their phrasing, 'just ends.' A phone rings, and the reader never learns what happened to the characters. They wondered aloud whether something had been left out by mistake.
On the prose complaint specifically, the pool splits one to one. A four-star reader calls the dialogue witty and steamy, enjoys the cheesy and heartfelt stretches, and notes approvingly: 'No grammatical errors which is always a plus.' Two readers, opposite verdicts, same text. That is not a majority position in either direction, and I would not weight it heavily. Copy quality in indie romance varies enough that your own tolerance for it is the real variable.
The ending draws a second complaint from a different direction. A reader who loved the slow burn and credited the relationship with 'so much pure feeling' still found the close abrupt and confusing: after all that tension about Carter's future, the resolution arrives inside a phone call the reader never gets to witness, followed by everything being sorted in one motion. They wanted an epilogue. Counting carefully, two of the five attached responses raise the ending independently, which makes it the one consistent reservation in an otherwise affectionate set of reactions.
Mulder Delivers the Relationship, Skips the Landing
Readers who want their sports romance low on manufactured conflict will do well here. The obstacles are internal, the supporting cast is friendly, and nobody turns up in the third act to invent a misunderstanding. If your preferred shape is two people becoming genuine friends first, with the romance growing out of that rather than interrupting it, Mulder delivers exactly that across nearly nine hours. It suits a listener who wants company rather than tension, and the college setting keeps the stakes human sized: a season, a degree, a lease, and a career that may or may not happen.
Anyone who needs a landing should think twice. The closing stretch is the weak point of the book, and a listener who measures a romance by its final chapter will finish this one wanting a chapter that was never written. Print readers can at least flip back and confirm what they missed; in audio, a resolution that happens offstage simply arrives and stops. Pair that with the record listing this as a series opener, and the honest framing is that Shots on Net delivers a relationship in full and a conclusion in outline.
Common Questions
Does the Shots on Net audiobook end on a cliffhanger?
Not a cliffhanger in the usual sense. The central relationship reaches its resolution, but that resolution happens inside an offstage phone call rather than on the page, so the close can land as unfinished. Expect an emotional payoff without the settled epilogue that many romance listeners have come to treat as standard.
How much actual hockey is in the Shots on Net audiobook?
The sport supplies structure more than play-by-play. Carter is the starting netminder, and the pressure that drives the plot comes from his eligibility ending and his slim odds at a professional career. You get the rhythm of a college season rather than extended game coverage.
Why does the listed rating count look inconsistent with the responses shown?
The catalog record reports four ratings, yet five written responses are attached, scoring five, four, three, five and four. Those five average exactly the 4.2 shown, which points to the count field being the part that is off rather than the average. Read the score as drawn from five reactions.
Is this a good entry point to the SCU Hockey series?
It is the first entry, so yes by default. The book establishes the campus, the team and the secondary cast without assuming prior knowledge, and nothing in it depends on an earlier volume. Anyone starting the series has no reason to begin anywhere else.
