PUCKED Up by Helena Hunting

PUCKED Up by Helena Hunting

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Having laughed my butt off while reading Pucked (and why can’t that be literally?), I dove at the chance to read Pucked Up. Let me first assure those that have not read Pucked that you absolutely can read Pucked Up as a stand-alone book, but you are seriously shortchanging yourself on the experience that is Vi, Alex, and the MC. Those who read Pucked will be delighted to know that Vi and her filter-less mouth make many appearances in this installment as she is Buck’s step-sister after all. And while the humor is certainly rampant within this book, I was surprised by how much the humor was toned down from book one considering that Buck is a guy and all. But it worked because Hunting revealed Buck’s character in such a way that I realized that I was just as guilty of misjudging him as so many of the people around him were – and I even knew how good of a brother he was to Vi. Yep, I fell in love with the yeti!

Where Pucked was a romantic comedy featuring the borderline adolescent sense of humor of Vi, Pucked Up is more a comedy of errors with a sprinkling of adolescent humor. If there was a way for a situation to go wrong and lead to Buck looking like a manwhore on social media, it happened. Rather than the incidents feeling contrived as a way to add humor to the book, they felt like naturally occurring misfires as they were rarely situations of Buck’s making. The charity carwash is a perfect example of this because Buck went to the event with two very admirable goals and found himself plastered all over social media – again – in what looked to be a compromising situation when it wasn’t. Buck is one of those guys who can actually say “It’s not what it looks like” and it be completely true. He was also far deeper of a character than I would have ever expected from reading book one. His feelings for Sunny were genuine and made him want to be a better man. While their sexy fun times were seriously hot, I found the romance between Sunny and Buck to be far sweeter than I ever expected. And I loved it.

As much as I liked Sunny and felt badly for her when she messed up, she messed up HUGE because she let people close to her who didn’t know Buck and the relationship they had try to tell her what to think of him. That said, I loved it when she stood up to Alex and let him know that she wasn’t going to let him tell her what to think. But Hunting didn’t stop there with clearing the air because more than one person took the time to “man up” in this book and apologize for jumping to conclusions about Buck and what they assumed was going on. Human nature often leads to a level of immaturity when peoples’ feelings are hurt, causing them to lash out, but I liked how Hunting’s characters showed growth by owning up to what they did wrong and apologizing for it. It’s not something you see in a lot of romances, especially the new adult genre, so it was quite refreshing. Pucked Up was “incrawsome” and I really hope that Hunting plans to continue the series as I love this group of friends and would love to revisit them … and find out what went down between Lily and Randy.

I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Reviewed by Angela at Crystal's Many Reviewers!

Check out the Pucked Up (Pucked #2) by Helena Hunting blog post on Crystal's Many Reviewers.


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