CRAZY PUCKING LOVE (Taking Shots #3) by Cindi Madsen

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date November 7, 2016

I just met the girl of my dreams.

Megan Davenport is funny and smart, and she’s as much of an insomniac as I am. She’s also my team captain’s little sister, which I only found out after our passionate kiss.

Megan is completely off-limits—her brother makes that very clear—and I know better than to think I can keep a relationship going during hockey season anyway. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be late-night friends, right?

The only problem is, love makes you do crazy things, like breaking all the rules.

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REVIEW: CRAZY PUCKING LOVE is the third installment in Cindi Madsen’s contemporary, new adult TAKING SHOTS romance series focusing on the members of a Boston college hockey team. This is hockey player Dane Kowalski , and college student Megan Davenport’s story line. CRAZY PUCKING LOVE can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Megan is Beckett Davenport’s (Getting Lucky Number Seven #1) younger sister-and as such is off limits to the guys on his team.

Told from dual first person points of view (Dane and Megan) CRAZY PUCKING LOVE follows the building romance and relationship between Dane Kowalski and eighteen year old Megan Davenport. Unbeknownst to Megan, Dane is a member of the college hockey team- a team in which her brother Beckett is a member and his over protective alpha attitude has placed Megan in the ‘hands off’ category as it pertains to his fellow team players. Dane’s attraction to Megan finds our hero pushing away the young woman with whom he is falling in love leaving a heartbroken Megan to deal with the anxiety of another failed relationship. Megan’s ‘Fresh Start Checklist’ – a bucket list of things to accomplish while at college including finding a guy with boyfriend potential -begins to fall apart when Dane walks away because of his past and Megan’s brother’s warning.

Dane and Megan’s backstories are heartbreaking and full of angst and lost opportunities. Megan’s parents were killed years before, and Dane’s parents were all but absent throughout most of his life. To escape his home town Dane walked away and never looked back but recent events find our hero battling more guilt than his secret relationship with Megan Davenport. The $ex scenes are mostly implied reading more like a YA story line than a new adult formula.

Several of the previous story line couples plays secondary and supporting roles including Beckett Davenport and Lyla Wilder (Getting Lucky Number Seven #1) as well as Hudson Decker and Whitney Porter (Anatomy of a Player #2).

CRAZY PUCKING LOVE is a bit of a frustrating story line in that Dane is reluctant to cross an invisible line as it pertains to his relationship with Megan, and his friendship with teammate Becket Davenport. For all intents and purposes the situational anxiety was unfortunate in that I was disappointed in the overall feel of the story. The push and pull of the relationship was tempered by the possibility of Beckett’s discovery, and in this, their ‘dirty little secret’ felt more like an affair than a growing love.

CRAZY PUCKING LOVE is a story of ‘forbidden love’; a young woman on her own for the first time falling for an older man who is friends with her over-protective brother. The premise is entertaining but maddening; the characters are caught between friendship and love; the romance is a struggle towards a happily ever after.

Copy supplied by Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy