Y’all. Y’ALL. When I tell you that Odette Stone’s Puck Me Secretly starts off with a BANG of a meet cute, I mean that quite literally. When we first meet Rory, she’s waiting to get on a plane home to Vancouver after being away at college for four years. She’s dreading having to join the family business.
Rory’s at the bar in the first class lounge trying to ingest enough liquid cottage to get over here fear of flying. Max sits at the bar two seats down. She takes one look at him and falls in instant lust. She finds this a bit confusing since he is the literal opposite of the men she usually dates – kind, sensitive, artistic souls, or “man babies” as we learn her father refers to them. Max, on the other hand, inspired this immediate thought: “well, he’s made to fuck.” Some small talk ensues when the boarding call sounds and Max leaves.
Struggling with her fear, Rory ignores the first two calls to board the plane. She manages to make it on when they page her by name, but she can tell all of the other passengers are annoyed by her tardiness. Anyway, they turn out to be seated next to each other on the same flight and are being sexy and flirty when the plane literally falls out of the sky. This all happens before page 25.
When she finally arrives safely in Vancouver, we learn that her father owns the local NHL franchise and fully expects her to take part in every aspect of the business. Her first task on her first day? Call out #33 for some bad behavior during an impromptu team meeting. Guess who #33 turns out to be… you can have three guesses, but you only need one.
Anyway, this book is literally filled with secrets (hence the punny title). There’s a mysterious conspiracy going on, questionable relational dynamics, secrets of all kinds at every level and the more you have figured out, the more secrets the author alludes to. The coincidences, dear lord, the coincidences are unbelievable.
Here’s the thing though: Odette Stone somehow managed to take a plot that was ultimately fairly predictable and a group of characters that I either actively disliked or wanted to shake because of their poor communication skills and make me CARE about them. That’s some good writing there, chère.
Note: I SO wanted to use nothing but gifs from The Cutting Edge, but this wasn’t about figure skating, so TOE PICK! didn’t really seem right. 😉
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