Scan barcode
A review by elenajohansen
Puck Aholic by Lili Valente
3.0
"And they were roommates" isn't my favorite trope, but I don't hate it, either. I think this isn't the best example, because they were already attracted to each other before they moved in together and they start sleeping together really quickly, so there's no time to savor any unresolved sexual tension.
Diana is annoying, but in a way that feels too real and hits a little too close to home. Her pessimism regarding men in general and her love life in specific isn't something I relate to, but her feelings of being a crazy messy burden on anyone who might care for her, I get. Deeply. So I do understand her resolve to swear off men and dating, though I think "until I feel better about myself" would be a more interesting conflict for the story than her deadline of "forever."
Tanner is... well, as a boyfriend, he's pretty much perfect, and that's a bit of the problem. Sure, he and Diana fight like wildcats in the very beginning, but my brain read all those altercations as Diana deliberately provoking him until she got him to take the bait, so I'm not going to hold that against him. The rest of the problem is that his personal conflict arc--ADHD and his career--has very little to do with Diana at any point. Occasionally the narrative takes a stab at linking them, like "oh, I can't handle a girlfriend on top of this, she'll be a distraction," but that's undermined by two things: Diana's clearly a distraction just as a roommate, even if she never did become Tanner's girlfriend, and also once they do get together, Tanner starts skating better, to the point where his teammates notice and approve.
While I'm not disappointed with Tanner as book boyfriend material, I am unhappy with the way his neurodivergence is treated, because his ADHD gets ignored for large parts of the book. In the beginning, he sort of hedges around it in his POV chapters, sure, fine, we're building up to the reveal. But once it's revealed, he only displays any of his supposedly regular coping behaviors when the plot needs him to, not the rest of the time, and certainly none of them were foreshadowed with any significance. If he lives by the to-do list he keeps on his phone, why don't we know about it until at least halfway through the book? Why does his summer hiatus seem completely unscheduled? Because whenever Diana pisses him off he just goes back to the gym at the drop of a hat. Were all those gym sessions on the list, or did he really not have anything else planned for that day? Why is he never obviously nervous about being late to something or deviating from his routine? Why is there not even much evidence that he even has a routine?
Don't get me wrong, I want more romance heroes to be dealing with mental illness or neurodivergence as characters, because men's mental health in the real world is something society tries really hard to sweep under the rug. But this just feels shallow. (Except for the scene where Diana helps Tanner with his phobia, because that is well established from the team's prank wars, and also echoes a scene with Wanda the pig earlier in the book. So that was actually really good. But the ADHD rep, not so much. Also, Wanda was pretty cute, and I'll grant that having the pet be a pig instead of something more ordinary has a certain charm to it, as does Chloe's hedgehog at the end of the book. Hedgehogs are lovely.)
Okay, I've aired my grievances, but this was still funny to me, as the earlier novels were, I'm still going on with the series, though I'm hoping I get plots that are better-realized again soon, like the first book.
Diana is annoying, but in a way that feels too real and hits a little too close to home. Her pessimism regarding men in general and her love life in specific isn't something I relate to, but her feelings of being a crazy messy burden on anyone who might care for her, I get. Deeply. So I do understand her resolve to swear off men and dating, though I think "until I feel better about myself" would be a more interesting conflict for the story than her deadline of "forever."
Tanner is... well, as a boyfriend, he's pretty much perfect, and that's a bit of the problem. Sure, he and Diana fight like wildcats in the very beginning, but my brain read all those altercations as Diana deliberately provoking him until she got him to take the bait, so I'm not going to hold that against him. The rest of the problem is that his personal conflict arc--ADHD and his career--has very little to do with Diana at any point. Occasionally the narrative takes a stab at linking them, like "oh, I can't handle a girlfriend on top of this, she'll be a distraction," but that's undermined by two things: Diana's clearly a distraction just as a roommate, even if she never did become Tanner's girlfriend, and also once they do get together, Tanner starts skating better, to the point where his teammates notice and approve.
While I'm not disappointed with Tanner as book boyfriend material, I am unhappy with the way his neurodivergence is treated, because his ADHD gets ignored for large parts of the book. In the beginning, he sort of hedges around it in his POV chapters, sure, fine, we're building up to the reveal. But once it's revealed, he only displays any of his supposedly regular coping behaviors when the plot needs him to, not the rest of the time, and certainly none of them were foreshadowed with any significance. If he lives by the to-do list he keeps on his phone, why don't we know about it until at least halfway through the book? Why does his summer hiatus seem completely unscheduled? Because whenever Diana pisses him off he just goes back to the gym at the drop of a hat. Were all those gym sessions on the list, or did he really not have anything else planned for that day? Why is he never obviously nervous about being late to something or deviating from his routine? Why is there not even much evidence that he even has a routine?
Don't get me wrong, I want more romance heroes to be dealing with mental illness or neurodivergence as characters, because men's mental health in the real world is something society tries really hard to sweep under the rug. But this just feels shallow. (Except for the scene where Diana helps Tanner with his phobia, because that is well established from the team's prank wars, and also echoes a scene with Wanda the pig earlier in the book. So that was actually really good. But the ADHD rep, not so much. Also, Wanda was pretty cute, and I'll grant that having the pet be a pig instead of something more ordinary has a certain charm to it, as does Chloe's hedgehog at the end of the book. Hedgehogs are lovely.)
Okay, I've aired my grievances, but this was still funny to me, as the earlier novels were, I'm still going on with the series, though I'm hoping I get plots that are better-realized again soon, like the first book.