Thank you to H. Hunting and her team for the advance reader copy of Bitter Sweet Heart, the second story in the Lies, Hearts and Truths series.
My excitement for this book is unreal! I loved our first Pucked second-generation story, Little Lies. I am ecstatic that Helena is giving us another Waters child and a teacher-student romance!
I am a member of Helena Hunting’s review team, but I remain honest and genuine in my reviews.
From the outside looking in, I live a charmed life: hockey legend for a father, my own promising future in the league, a great family, awesome friends. It’s not untrue, but it’s not quite that simple either.
My dad’s advice has always been to make hockey my number-one priority—at least until I make it to the pros. So, going into my senior year of college, I have a plan. I’ll put in the effort required to pass my classes, play hockey like my life depends on it, and avoid relationships. All I have to do is stay focused on the end game, and I’ll walk away with a degree and into a career in the NHL.
It should be easy.
But when a woman literally floats into my dock, just before summer ends and my senior year begins, I can’t resist one last hookup. What harm could a one-night stand do? It’s not like we even exchanged numbers.
Everything is fine until I run into her on campus.
It’s a big school. I should be able to avoid her.
Except she happens to be in my class.
And she’s not a student.
She’s my professor.
Check out my more detailed thoughts below…
- Characters: Maverick Waters is our hero. If you have read Pucked you’ll be familiar with the Waters family. If you haven’t read Pucked then you better stop reading this and don’t come back until you have read all the Pucked books and Little Lies. Maverick is the son of Violet and Alex Waters and is the brother of Violet from the first story in this series. Mav is a man with a plan when we meet him, finish university and get called up to NHL training camp. To no one’s surprise, I fell in love with another Waters man. Mav has the charms of his father, with even more depth. Our heroine is Clover Sweet, a summer hookup for Mav that becomes a creative writing professor. I admired Clover and her strengths. We meet her in the process of trying to get her dickbag of an ex-husband to sign the divorce papers. Neither of them has an easy story to read, they both have different traumas past and present to work through. Mav’s trauma and bad nightmares had my heart hurting for him. One of my favourite character interactions was seeing Alex and Vi as parents, we especially got lots of Father Alex time and I loved seeing this new dimension to a character I have loved for a long time.
- Setting: The story is mostly set at the university. I loved how they lived in the same neighbourhood, only a few streets apart in fact. This setup made for lots of sneaking around. Despite many other second-generation Pucked characters living with Mav, we did not get much time with the wider cast, because much of the story was quite insular.
- Pacing: I loved how much this book kept surprising me. I never thought Maverick’s story would make me cry so much, did not pick up on the sad vibes when we met him in Little Lies. This book was the perfect length, with A+ pacing.
- Romance: This romance starts with such a funny meet cute. Clover literally floats downstream at Peral Lake and she washes up on Mav’s shore. They hook up, then a few weeks later we get the satisfaction of the I didn’t know she would be my teacher trope. In such a short time I was so emotionally attached to this couple and their future together. I loved that we started with more of a slow burn, mostly because they could not really be officially together yet. Plus all the time they denied themselves each other’s affection. The slow burn aspects really made when they did come together so much more satisfying. The sex scenes were hot, and Mav’s overabundant consent check-ins were so considerate.
Bitter Sweet Heart receives five out of five stars.
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Thank you again to Helena and her team for the review opportunity. Thank you for reading and supporting my blog!
