The “why choose” romance occupies an unusual position in the broader romance genre — it is simultaneously one of the most searched subgenres on BookTok and one of the least discussed in mainstream book coverage. Emily Rath’s Pucking Around is the book that brought this format into the sports romance conversation in a serious way, and it did so by doing the thing that all good why-choose romance has to do: making the emotional intelligence of the arrangement matter more than the novelty of it.
The premise is straightforward. Caitlin, a sports medicine doctor, enters the orbit of the Jacksonville Rays hockey team and finds herself building genuine connections with multiple players simultaneously. What Rath does that elevates the book above its premise is treat those connections as genuinely distinct. This is not a story where multiple men are interchangeable expressions of the same attraction — each relationship has its own texture, its own humor, its own emotional stakes. Caitlin’s dynamic with each of them reflects something different about who she is and what she needs, and the book is serious about the work of building that.
The hockey world is rendered with real detail — Rath clearly knows the culture, the rhythms of a professional team’s season, the specific camaraderie of people who spend most of their lives in each other’s company under high-pressure conditions. That grounding makes the emotional content more believable rather than less; this is a world where unusual arrangements are not unthinkable, where the intensity of shared experience can produce connections that don’t fit conventional categories.
What this book asks readers to accept is not the premise itself — readers who pick up a why-choose romance know what they’re signing up for — but the emotional reality of it. Rath makes that ask thoughtfully. Caitlin is a credible person, not a fantasy object; her interiority is specific and her development across the novel is legible. By the time the book reaches its emotional core, you understand what this arrangement means to her in terms that are entirely independent of its genre category.
The audiobook is one of the more discussed listening experiences in this corner of the genre — the multiple character voices require clear narration choices, and the production handles them with genuine skill. For readers who have been curious about the why-choose format but uncertain about entry points, this is among the most emotionally grounded options available. Readers who loved the found-family dimension of Icebreaker will find that Rath builds something similar — a community of people who become each other’s chosen constants — with the romantic arrangement built inside that community rather than separate from it.
Sports romance, at its best, is about the intimacy that forms under pressure — when you are around the same people constantly, when performance is public and recovery is private, and when the ordinary walls between people get worn down by proximity. Rath uses the sports world to explain why connections like Caitlin’s are possible, which makes the whole novel feel less like a fantasy and more like a very specific kind of truth.
What Pucking Around is ultimately about is a woman who has spent her professional life very competent and very alone discovering that she doesn’t have to keep making that choice. That is not a subgenre argument. That is just a love story.