Pucking Ever After Volume One is the novella that you should read after Pucking Around. It consists of a few chapters of short little extra bits focusing on the relationships between Rachel, Jake, Caleb, and Ilmari. You absolutely need to read Pucking Around because you will have no idea what is going on without having read it first. You should also buy Volume Two when you buy Volume One, because one chapter in Volume Two should be read before the second half of Volume One. I don’t know why the author chose to put that particular chapter in Volume Two, maybe I’ll see the sense of it when I get to it. However, before that can occur, I need to read the second full length novel in this series, Pucking Wild, which I am working on right now.
Although this was only six short chapters, it was fun to get a glimpse into the day to day life of these characters after the climax of the last book. I believe that the author wrote this because it was purely fun for her, and she took her readers’ suggestions into consideration. I believe that the content of Volume One and Two was written according to what the fans wanted to get a little more of. If someone suggested the plot behind chapter six in this book, or if the author decided that she wanted to write it all on her own, I am very grateful either way. That chapter was my hands down favorite in this novella and probably one of my favorite chapters that I have read in the series so far. The only spoiler I will give is that it focuses on Jake and Caleb. And there is a big cliffhanger at the end, the conclusion of which is coming in the fourth full length novel in this series, which is being released in September. Come back tomorrow to see what I have to say about the second book in this series, Pucking Wild.
I’ve been reading a lot of romantic fantasy, romantasy if you will, and consuming as much of this type of fiction as I can has pretty much been my motivation to read as much as possible lately. But I think I just found a series that will bring me back to reality. A hockey romance, a very dirty hockey romance.
If you read my post from last week I discussed the novella which was a prequel to this book. That piece of work was full of smut. This full length novel had a decent story with plot behind it, and the scenes with our love interests were just as naughty. On top of that, as the story progressed the moments between our female main character and all her men became even more debaucherous.
The story starts off a few months after that one night between Rachel and Jake. She is wallowing in her disappointment at not getting the position she was hoping for, and not being near Jake. Due to a misfortune, the job that Rachel has been in a pit of depression over is now available. Less than forty eight hours later she has left the apartment she shared with her best friend in Cincinnati and has arrived in Jacksonville. She is picked up by one of her new colleagues and they could not have had a worse first encounter. The story starts off with the regular introduction of the characters, but things get heated pretty quickly when Rachel sees Jake walking towards her and at that moment learns that she is going to be working with him. Even though the two are attracted to each other with a desperate longing akin to lost soulmates meeting for the first time, Rachel puts her foot down. She doesn’t want to risk either of their jobs with an office romance. Jake reluctantly agrees to her terms, but he wants nothing more than to break down her walls, and he is not at all subtle when it comes to hiding his true intentions. There are other characters and other plot points I want to discuss, but to say any more would in my opinion be giving too much away. And I don’t want to do that because I believe this is a book worth getting into, without spoilers, for any of my fellow smut lovers looking for a new series to start.
Even though this piece of fiction tells a story that could possibly happen in real life, and by that I mean there isn’t any magic being thrown about or mystical creatures walking around, I think that it would have to be in very similar circumstances for something like this to happen. I feel like the events that occur and the relationships that develop could only exist between famous professional athletes and children of the extremely wealthy. I can tell you, I don’t personally know anyone who has ever lived anything close to what goes on in this story and I don’t think I ever will.
Forgetting all that, this book gets a five out of five on my raunchy scale. I remember the exact scene in the novel when I realized that I had just read the filthiest piece of literature I had ever read in my life. And while there were more equally scandalous scenes ahead of me, the one encounter I just mentioned is one I will never forget. There was a point in the midst of the story when I thought that the numbers were a bit much, but everything seemed to round out well enough in the end. All I can say is, it couldn’t be me.
If you don’t live in New Jersey, you probably weren’t aware of a crisis that started in February and was resolved just a few weeks ago. A bunch of sinkholes were discovered underneath a major highway, one that thousands of people used every day to commute from the suburbs to the more urban areas, including New York City. My commute of 40 minutes turned into 90 minutes, and I know it was even worse for others. I was driving home from work one of those days, stuck in the terrible mess of alternate routes, and I wasn’t in the mood to listen to music. Shocking, if you know me. So I started browsing through the audiobook section of Spotify and I came across this absolute gem of a novella that led to me buying the entire series in book form.
After listening to this novella in its entirety, I knew I wanted to read it even though I had just finished listening to it, and from there I wanted to immediately move on to the rest of the series. I was beyond ecstatic when I saw that there were three large novels waiting for me plus two more novellas, and I believe future works to come. But this, this right here, seventy three pages of almost pure smut.
Rachel is sitting in a bar, trying to drink away her sorrows after receiving some disappointing news. She wants to be alone, but some drunk trust fund boy is chatting her up, oblivious to how irritated he is making her. Just before she can blow up in his face, in walks Jake. He gets her, he can sense that she wants to drink in solitude, so he gets rid of the guy by pretending that they know each other and were planning to meet up this whole time. Good guy Jake plans to ignore Rachel for the remainder of her time there, or at least until the yacht club bro and all his friends leave, but to his surprise, she starts talking to him.
Things happen pretty fast after this. Once they leave the bar the rest of the novella is pretty much a non stop, multi round one night stand that is plenty descriptive. I was impressed. Not just with how the moments were described but by the way the author expressed that the two were kind of real life soul mates. They certainly have a few things in common, and they seem to think the same way at times, but the most enrapturing thing is the way their bodies are so in sync. And this is just a prequel to the love cyclone that is Jake and Rachel. It gets even more intense in the full length novel, which I will tell you all about next week.
This novel is a unique first person perspective from the view of the devil, Lucifer. Out of Hell, living in the body of a man who recently decided to commit suicide, Lucifer is taking a holiday under the guise of considering an offer from God. If Lucifer can live for one month free of sin in the body of this human man, he can remain in the man’s body for the rest of the vessel’s mortal life and return to Heaven at the end of it. Oh, and he has to ask God for forgiveness first too.
The Lucifer in this book is a version I have never seen depicted before. He’s not as evil as you might think, he doesn’t spend all his time torturing those who are sent down to his domain. He seems to love spreading his influence more than anything else, whispering in the wind with the hopes of getting mortals to act on their terrible thoughts. He is proud of the fact that more souls get sent to Hell than to Heaven, and from what he says it’s not even a close race. Even though his entire existence is spent in constant, excruciating physical pain, he would never go back to God’s rule under any circumstance. But when the offer that God places before him means getting a reprieve from that pain, he pretends to seriously consider the offer just so he can have a little vacation.
The book is written without chapters, just constant narration from Lucifer, and he is a real chatterbox. There are occasional conversations between Lucifer with either humans or angels, but mostly the novel consists of the devil reflecting on the entirety of his existence, from creation to the present. He goes over what he considers some of his greatest moments, what parts of the story we got wrong, time, and various other eternal worldly things. It was a lot at times, but it was interesting. I especially enjoyed his monologue on Eve. But what made me change my mind about enjoying the book to not being sure I liked it had to do with the ending.
The entire story was not ambiguous at all, everything was spelled out very clearly, until you got to the very end. I spent entirely too much time after finishing the book trying to confirm my uncertain conclusion that Lucifer returned to Hell once he left Gunn’s body. At the end of his trial period he was given the choice to return to Heaven, if he would do the unthinkable and ask God for forgiveness. It was pretty clear to me, due to the many times throughout the novel Lucifer stated that he had absolutely no intention of doing that, that he would be staying true to his word. Even when Rafael tried to intervene by revealing to Lucifer what God was considering, he still refused. Some may say this is unreasonably, dangerously, stubborn of him, but I am kind of impressed with how true to himself Lucifer was. Lucifer made a lot of really good points as to why he never regretted what he did and why he wasn’t willing to go back to living under God’s rule. I’m on his side.
But while I think it is pretty clear where he ended up, it wasn’t entirely crystal to me whether or not Lucifer made a side quest before returning to his kingdom. It was never mentioned if Lucifer could travel to Heaven at all, with the intention of just speaking to God or one of the angels, not for the purpose of returning. If Lucifer wanted to make a deal with God, as opposed to what occurred here, is it something that could have happened?
In any case, Gunn has a lot to deal with once he gets placed back into his body. And I’m not saying this in a, oh can you imagine the mess he had to deal with once he wasn’t possessed anymore way, but in the fact that you do actually get a few pages from Gunn’s perspective at the conclusion. And from the third to last line of the book, which I will not spoil for you, I think he was mildly aware, or at least had a pretty good idea, of what happened to him while he was in limbo.
If anyone has been wondering where I have been, although I highly doubt anyone has been worried over my disappearance, I moved and I have just been too busy to read or write for the past few weeks. I am finally settled in enough that I can get back to reading books and writing reviews for them. And hopefully I will be able to stay consistent with my usual weekly schedule.
So, while I finished this book prior to my move, I have not had a chance to write anything until now. But I was so intrigued by the contents that it is still fresh in my mind. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, it was well written, absolutely fascinating, insightful, and full of very valuable knowledge that I will need one day. I already started implementing some changes into my life in the hopes of seeing some improvements in both my body and my mind.
The subtitle says it all, this book will tell you everything you need to know as a woman, how you can make changes to improve your life now and how you can prepare for the future. There is abundance of information about hormones, how they fluctuate throughout the month, which ones make you frisky and which ones make you find sex unappealing, and what hormones you’re going to have more or less of as you age. It goes over what certain foods and beverages might be good or bad for you throughout your cycle and your life. Apparently, I need to enjoy coffee while I am young because I may need to steer clear of it as I get older. It talks about sleep, how much you need, the cons of napping, and what may be affecting your sleep (food, drink, alcohol, drugs, hormones, stress). If you have questions about your sex drive, chances are you will find answers here. There are discussions regarding the effect of drugs on the sex drive, including birth control and psychiatric medications. Having children and a career makes it very difficult for a lot of women to switch from mother/business woman mode to their sexual self, there are suggestions for what you can do to find that woman again. That is a general overview, it would be impossible for me to summarize this book, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. I believe that every woman should read this book. Why wouldn’t you want to know more about your own body? I also believe that men should read this book too. It would benefit any man that is in a relationship with a woman, understanding what they go through not just day to day but over the course of their lives would strengthen any relationship.
I do want to give special attention to one chapter in this book, the one discussing perimenopause. I only heard this term very recently, but since becoming aware of it I have been very interested in learning more. Perimenopause is the stage that occurs before menopause, it can begin years before the female body is getting ready to enter menopause and it can begin earlier than you think, sometimes even in the late thirties. Menopause actually only lasts one day, and that day is the anniversary of your last period. Before that day comes, women experience irregular periods, hot flashes, and a slew of other unpleasantness. Knowing that perimenopause is coming, that it might be closer than you think, can enable you to prepare yourself for it. Knowing what you can do to try to make the inevitable changes easier for you is even better.
I would also like to make mention of just a fun and thought provoking subject matter that was discussed a few times in the book throughout. Human bodies produce their own cannabinoids, the molecules get pumped into production during times of stress. Besides cannabinoids being effective in calming you down, they also regulate your metabolism. You wouldn’t think so, but people who partake in cannabis regularly have smaller waistlines than those who don’t. So if you do smoke or ingest recreationally you don’t have to worry about the munchies affecting your weight.
Well that’s enough praise from me. Woman, man, or anyone in between, I highly recommend reading this book.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 