Jason Molenda reviewed Pucked by Helena Hunting
Review of 'Pucked' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
I regret to say I gave this book up. It's a fun sexy hot-hot contemporary hockey romance and the hockey stuff is almost all believable. However, about 65% of the way through the book we have this scene from the hero's first-person perspective when he's alone with the heroine, he has the first line of dialog:
"There's something you should know."
"Please don't tell me you had gender reassignment surgery. I don't think I can manage that today."
"What?"
"Sorry." She crosses and uncrosses her legs. "You sound so serious. It's making me nervous."
I try not to laugh. "I assure you, all my parts are my own."
"That's a relief; otherwise you would've had the biggest vagina in the world as a woman."
(the book talks about how the hero has a big penis for most of the book, which is why she ends up with that last line; …
I regret to say I gave this book up. It's a fun sexy hot-hot contemporary hockey romance and the hockey stuff is almost all believable. However, about 65% of the way through the book we have this scene from the hero's first-person perspective when he's alone with the heroine, he has the first line of dialog:
"There's something you should know."
"Please don't tell me you had gender reassignment surgery. I don't think I can manage that today."
"What?"
"Sorry." She crosses and uncrosses her legs. "You sound so serious. It's making me nervous."
I try not to laugh. "I assure you, all my parts are my own."
"That's a relief; otherwise you would've had the biggest vagina in the world as a woman."
(the book talks about how the hero has a big penis for most of the book, which is why she ends up with that last line; it isn't entirely out of left field)
and I'm out. I don't know why there's this transphobic garbage in a perfectly nice book, I can't imagine how this got past an editor or any test readers. Maybe it started out as "don't tell me you had a sex change operation" and someone said man, you should do something about that, and the author thought "ok yeah let's go with gender reassignment surgery but keep the transphobia it's hilarious".
Maybe it's realistic that a twenty-two year old woman would say something like that to her twenty-five year old boyfriend. But I don't need it in my life and I sure as hell don't need it in my romance books. I was a big fan of this book up until this point, but I'm not giving a book that throws this kind of nasty shit around any more of my time, I'm out. Life is too short to waste it on a book that would include anything like this.