Verdict: The men are in a relationship with each other, not just with her — which is what actually divides readers, not the harem count. A soft-landing why-choose hockey romance that asks 750 pages of patience.
Best for: Readers curious about why-choose who want it delivered in a warm, banter-led hockey romance rather than a dark one, and who genuinely want an m/m thread running inside the group.
Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — romance.io’s top band, “Explicit and plentiful”)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5/5 — 3.73 on Goodreads across 235,410 ratings, 3.78 on StoryGraph with a 5% did-not-finish rate, and the lowest-rated book in its own series)
Tropes: Poly, sports, bisexuality, reverse harem, MMF, athlete hero, praise kink, secret relationship, friends to lovers, breeding, queer awakening.
Kindle Unlimited: Verified in KU on 21 August 2026, checked on the Amazon product page.
Rachel Price takes a job as a team doctor for the Jacksonville Rays and ends up entangled with three of them. That is the premise every list gives you. Here is the one that matters and almost nobody leads with: Jake and Caleb fall for each other, and their thread is developed as its own romance rather than as a bonus.
The tag data says so before any reviewer does. On romance.io, “bisexuality” sits at 77 taggers — above “reverse harem” at 70 — with poly at 94, m-m-f at 70, and “m-m” present in the tail. Readers are filing this as a queer book, not a harem book with a queer flourish.
What Is Pucking Around About?
Rachel is a sports-medicine doctor taking a temporary post with an NHL expansion team. Jake is the goalie, Caleb the captain, Ilmari the Finnish veteran who wants nothing to do with any of it. The book runs 105 chapters across four points of view and ends with all four of them together — this is a genuine polyamorous resolution, not a choose-one.
What makes it structurally unusual is that the men are not merely co-existing around the heroine. Jake’s arc is a bisexual awakening through Caleb, with a scene between the two of them without Rachel present, jealousy that runs between the men rather than through her, and romantic declarations exchanged. By the end Jake is described as out as a bisexual NHL player.
What Makes This Why-Choose Hockey Romance Work
It is the on-ramp, and that is a real function. A Substack essay on the subgenre positions it precisely: Pucking Around reads much more like a conventional hockey romance, with normal rom-com banter, which makes it the recommended entry point for readers curious about why-choose but put off by darker reverse harem. That framing is fair and it is corroborated by the mood tags — StoryGraph readers describe it as emotional, funny and lighthearted.
The closeted-athlete material is also doing real work, and the content-warning data shows where. StoryGraph readers flag outing 82 times across severity levels, homophobia 76 times and biphobia 29. Those are the standout non-sexual flags on the book, and they map directly onto Jake’s storyline. This is not decorative queerness.
Book Synopsis
Rachel joins the Rays for a season she intends to be temporary. Over roughly 750 self-published pages — 573 in the Kensington reprint, nearly twenty-five hours in audio — she and three players negotiate their way into a closed quad. It is book one of the Jacksonville Rays series, it does not end on a cliffhanger, and later books follow different couples on the same team.
My Review
Two honest things, one of which is a warning and one of which is a defence.
The warning is length, and it is the most consistent complaint across every negative review of this book without exception. Reviewers describe it as too long and too drawn out, one abandoning it at 47% as “750 pages of words,” another stalling at 89% for four months. The structural diagnosis is the same each time: once the romantic tension resolves, the back half becomes emotional processing and sex scenes with no external conflict to push against. StoryGraph’s 5% did-not-finish rate and Goodreads’ 16% at one or two stars are the quantitative shadow of exactly that.
The defence is that the length is also what its supporters credit — the page count buys slow-moving detail that makes four people falling in love with each other feel plausible instead of arranged. A three-way relationship built in 300 pages would not survive scrutiny. This one is built in 750 and it does.
Beyond that, two things prospective readers should know. First, the book has no author-published or publisher-published content warning list at all — the author’s site says a full list is coming and has not arrived. Everything available is crowd-sourced, which for a book with 475 graphic sexual-content flags and a substantial outing storyline is a real gap. Second, breeding kink is tagged 63 times on romance.io and draws specific repeated objection, alongside slut-shaming at 20.
We land at 3.5. Genuinely warm, structurally braver than its shelf-mates, and about 200 pages longer than its plot.
How Spicy Is Pucking Around?
Top band. romance.io rates it 5 of 5, “Explicit and plentiful.” The specific tags run anal sex (65 taggers), breeding (63), praise kink (61), plus double penetration, daddy kink, fem-dom, BDSM, bondage and spanking in the tail. StoryGraph readers flag graphic sexual content 475 times — the highest single flag on the book by a factor of seven.
Unlike most books in this band, the heat is warm rather than menacing. The crowd content warnings are notably light on coercion: slut shaming (20), mental trauma (14), queerphobia (14). There is no dubious-consent cluster here.
Who Should Read This Book?
Read it if you want why-choose without darkness, you want the men to be in it with each other rather than around her, and you have the patience for a very long book.
Skip it if pacing matters more to you than payoff, if breeding kink is a line, or if you are arriving from standard reverse harem expecting the love interests not to touch. They do, at length, and it is the point.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
This is the rare self-published romance whose BookTok performance was documented by the trade press rather than only by its publisher. Publishers Weekly, in an editorial feature on BookTok and romance, reports that #PuckingAround gained more than 27 million views within six months of publication, with series hashtags since accumulating over 20 million more — and credits Emily Rath as among the first to bring why-choose to the hockey rink. We could not read TikTok directly; the platform blocks automated access, so those figures are PW’s rather than ours.
Kensington picked the book up after self-publication, reissuing it in trade paperback in January 2024 and again in April 2025 bundled with the prequel novella. Penguin took UK ebook rights. Sales figures circulating for the series come from PW Studio branded content rather than PW’s newsroom, so we are not repeating them as verified.
The critical record is entirely blog-level — no Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Smart Bitches or All About Romance review exists — and it is genuinely split rather than politely mixed. Rose Petals gave it 1.5/5 and called it a hot mess; Cannonball Read gave 2/5 and did not finish; Dark Academicals landed at a self-described appreciative 2.5; ON Magazine was positive and observed simply that some love it and some hate it. Book Babes Unite gave it five for spice.
Series context is its own data point. On Goodreads, Pucking Around at 3.73 is the lowest-rated book in the Jacksonville Rays series — Pucking Strong sits at 4.27, Pucking Sweet at 4.17, Pucking Wild at 4.10. Readers who push through the entry point rate everything after it higher.
We could not search Reddit for this piece; the platform was unreachable from our research environment. That gap is named rather than filled.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Pucking Around end polyamorously or does she choose?
Polyamorously. All four end up together in a closed quad. Rachel does not choose, and there is no cliffhanger — the relationship resolves within the book.
Is there m/m content in Pucking Around?
Yes, and it is a developed thread rather than a gesture. Jake’s bisexual awakening happens through Caleb, including a scene between the two of them without Rachel present, jealousy running between the men, and romantic declarations exchanged. On romance.io “bisexuality” is tagged 77 times, above “reverse harem” at 70.
How long is Pucking Around?
Around 750 pages in the original self-published paperback, 573 in the Kensington reprint, and nearly twenty-five hours in audio across 105 chapters. Length is the most consistent criticism in every negative review.
How spicy is Pucking Around?
romance.io bands it 5 of 5, “Explicit and plentiful.” Anal sex is tagged 65 times, breeding 63 and praise kink 61. StoryGraph readers flag graphic sexual content 475 times.
What are the content warnings for Pucking Around?
There is no author-published or publisher-published list — the author’s site says one is coming and it has not arrived. Everything available is crowd-sourced. StoryGraph readers flag outing 82 times across severity levels, homophobia 76 and biphobia 29, plus eating disorder and suicide attempt at minor level. romance.io adds slut shaming (20), mental trauma (14), queerphobia (14), substance abuse (13), eating disorders (9) and alcoholism (9). Breeding kink is tagged 63 times as a trope and draws repeated objection.
Can I read Pucking Around as a standalone?
Yes. Later Jacksonville Rays books follow different couples on the same team. A short prequel, That One Night, comes chronologically first but is not required — the 2025 edition and the audiobook bundle it in.
If You Loved Pucking Around, Read These Next
All verified in Kindle Unlimited on 21 August 2026.
- Faking with Benefits — Lily Gold. The other warm, funny why-choose book on our list, at the same heat band and a third of the length.
- Mile High — Liz Tomforde. If the hockey is the draw rather than the poly structure — band 4, single love interest, professional-season stakes.
- Behind the Net — Stephanie Archer. Hockey, band 4, slow burn, and considerably tighter.
The Bottom Line
Pucking Around is the on-ramp book for why-choose, and it earns that position by being warm, funny and free of the coercion that defines most of the top heat band. It is also the longest book on our spicy list by a wide margin and the lowest-rated entry in its own series. If the idea of an m/m romance running inside a poly hockey quad appeals, this is the book. If 750 pages of emotional processing sounds like a lot, it is.
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Pucking Around ranks as a structurally brave, tonally warm why-choose sports romance with a serious pacing problem — the queer thread is the real achievement and the page count is the real cost.
The Evidence Scorecard
These scores are derived from named public evidence — rating distributions, crowd tag counts, published content warnings and signed reviews — rather than from a full LRR reading of this title. Dimensions where the evidence does not support a number are marked “not established” instead of being guessed.
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ 3.73 average across 235,410 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ StoryGraph rates it 3.78 with a 5% did-not-finish rate
- ✓ romance.io’s genre crowd rates it highest at 3.92 from 790 ratings
- ✓ The lowest-rated book in its own five-book series
Romance ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ “Poly” is the top tag at 94 taggers, “bisexuality” at 77
- ✓ The men have their own developed romance, not just parallel arcs
- ✓ Resolves as a closed quad — nobody is chosen over anyone
- ✓ Friends-to-lovers and secret-relationship both tagged around 60
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Four first-person points of view across 105 chapters
- ✓ Jake’s bisexual awakening is a full arc rather than a subplot
- ✓ StoryGraph flags outing 82 times — the closeted storyline has weight
- ✓ One reviewer disputes the POV person; sources conflict and we have not resolved it
Writing ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Length is the universal complaint across every negative review
- ✓ Back half loses external conflict and becomes emotional processing
- ✓ Kensington reissued it in 2024 after self-publication
- ✓ Blog-level criticism only — no trade review exists
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ StoryGraph mood tags: emotional, funny, lighthearted
- ✓ 26,345 written Goodreads reviews
- ✓ 16% of Goodreads raters at one or two stars — a real dissenting bloc
- ✓ Defenders credit the length with making a four-way relationship believable
Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5
- ✓ romance.io bands it 5 of 5, “Explicit and plentiful”
- ✓ Anal sex 65 taggers, breeding 63, praise kink 61
- ✓ StoryGraph flags graphic sexual content 475 times
- ✓ Warm rather than coercive — no dubious-consent cluster in the tag data
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ No cliffhanger — the quad resolves within the book
- ✓ Polyamorous HEA rather than a choose-one
- ✓ Later books follow different couples on the same team
- ✓ Reviewers note the sequel setup is somewhat obvious
Re-read Value Not established
- ✓ Reddit was unreachable, so re-read thread evidence is unavailable
- ✓ Length works against casual re-reading
- ✓ Series continuation is strong but measures the series, not re-reads
- ✓ Insufficient direct evidence to score this dimension
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