Going for the Goal (The Perfect Play #3) by Sara Rider

Can we talk about how much I love this book. Hockey, sexy men with a sweet side, and a go getter female it was my trifecta. How did I not know people wrote books about hockey and romance… together?

This book was sexy, sweet and funny. I was in full blown laughter several times. If an author can make me laugh and spin a story that has steam and interest, I’m hooked. Sara Rider has me caught that’s for certain.

Jillian Nichols is a sports agent intern when we meet her for the first time at a party where she’s attempting to get a young sport star to sign with the agency she’s working for. Nick Salinger, known as “the Punisher”, is the NHL’s bad boy with a penchant for messing hot headed situations he settles with all 220 pounds of his 6 foot three frame. When the two run into each other at the party Jillian’s attending for work sparks fly and lips briefly meet, but she quickly disappears when the man she’s spent the past hour bearing her brain to turns out to be a famous hockey player she should be avoiding.

Years later, despite following the career of the Enforcer to his stardom with the New York Vipers she’s flabbergasted when the man walks into her sports agency demanding she represent him. Of course, no one is more surprised than the man in question when the small time agent turns him down and sends him packing with a stab in the thigh with her paperweight. What follows is a little bit of begging, a lot of heat and liberal dose of laughter as Jillian does her best to rebrand, rework, and reexamine everything she knows about this “alpha-hole hockey star” and as he does his best to comply with the strict mandates his sexy agent, who he can’t get enough of, sets for him. Toss in some dissolving contracts, another bad boy hockey star who’s all about himself no matter who he injures, and a loveable brother who bakes “famous vanilla rum French toast with peaches and whipped cream” and you have the perfect story to satisfy all your sexy hockey dreams.

I’ll be raving about this to all my hockey fan friends, even the guys who will surely roll their eyes at me.

Ms. Rider’s quotes are too great to avoid mentioning. A few of my favorite are:

“You’re a six-foot-three, two hundred and twenty-pound man with a dark and broody thing going on. That means you have to try ten times harder to come across as nice. You can use your millions to dry you manly tears.”

“How bad was it?” “She stabbed me in the leg with her paperweight.”

“Fine like you partied hard enough to be on a first-name basis with the NYPD and are to embarrassed to tell me the details? Or fine like you’ve started your own cat harem in your apartment and have since christened yourself Queen Purr?”

I hope there are more hockey related stories in this author’s future because I’m down for all things in that particular category even if that does rank somewhere within the “Puck Bunny” ranks.

** I received this book as an ARC in exchange for my honest unbiased feedback and review.***