Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖 (It took me a little bit to get into it, but I really loved after 30% or so)
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: third person from both the hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: Pretty soon in, about 5%, or chapter 2
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, two years later
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy in e-book form through NetGalley
Why I chose this book: I saw on NetGalley and was intrigued by a time travel where the hero goes back in time

Should I read in order?
I believe this is a stand alone novel

Basic plot:
When Tuck gets into an accident and falls into a frozen pond, he finds himself pulled into early 1800s England

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency? Jane Austen is writing Pride and Prejudice...so that’s a guess
- time travel – contemporary hero goes back in time
- hockey player hero – goalie (Michigander hero, but lived in Texas a number of years)
- author heroine
- road trip
- marriage of convenience
- celibate hero
- one bed
- bit of a size difference – hero is 6’2” and a head
- Gretna Green
- child free HEA
- higher steam – 5ish full scenes and some praise

Ages:
- heroine is 27, hero is 30

First line:
Tucker Taylor walked across the sticky floor carrying a second round of drinks for the table.

My thoughts:
I was so curious about this one! A hockey player that goes back in time?? I had to try it. I thought maybe it would be a bit TOO ridiculous….but this one totally took my heart by surprise.

It took me a little bit to get into it. I struggled a bit when they were initially meeting and accepting each other’s circumstances. It does feel very modern and the hero does talk about contemporary times pretty frequently. But..once these two had a plan and were together...I totally fell in love with them.

Lizzie is so sweet and fun. I love her personality and strength despite her unlikable family. But Tucker really stole the show for me. He is just the sweetest. I adored him. The way he falls for Lizzie, and the way he protects her and loves her and the way he talks to her in the bedroom just all made me melt!

I loved the humor in this book. Their relationship was so cute and adorable and genuine. It took me by surprise how much I adored the latter half of this novel.

My one complaint – I hate that he called her Pocket Rocket. Eww. lol

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: This is my first by this author!
Average rating: 5 stars
Favorite book: This one!

Endearments

The hero calls the heroine ‘Pocket Rocket’ and ‘babe’. 

Quotes any typos are my own!

Lizzy’s breath caught in a sharp exhale as she pushed her arms into the bulrushes, shoving them apart. Her gaze fell, locking with the piercing eyes of a brutal-looking man. The blood smeared across his angular features added a raw, dangerous edge to his appearance that intensified the darkness of his stare as he glared up at her.
---
American.
And gads, he was big. She’d wager once standing he’d rise a head taller than herself, and she was by no means a delicate violet.
---
Lizzy let out a sound that was a cross between stepping on a dog’s toy and letting the air out of a balloon.
Tuck glanced down to see if he’d grown a third nipple in the day’s chaos, but everything appeared as usual – dark hair whorling across his chest. “What?”
“You’re in a...a...a….” She craned her face skyward, a pulse fluttering in her throat as she flapped her arms like a hyperactive hummingbird.
He cocked a brow. He wasn’t imagining things. Lizzy might seem as prim as a nun, but she’d just checked him out. So what if he wasn’t as shredded as when he was in peak NHL shape, his muscles had been responding to his recovering workouts.
“You’re in a state of nature,” she blurted.
---
Her curiosity was piqued. “And you can make a living doing this hockey?”
A small smile played on his lips. “I do all right.”
“Because you stop a disc from going in a net. Fascinating.”
“Look.” His ears tinged pink. “There’s a lot more to it, all right? The plays, the arena, the crowd, the lights. It’s physical. It’s aggressive. It’s a highly structured competition.”
“How positively gladiatorial.” It wasn’t difficult to picture Mr. Taylor in the midst of the Colosseum, almost too vividly. Those big corded muscles slick with sweat. His chest heaving. A wild sort of primitive bloodlust in his eyes. She swallowed nervously.
---
He sat in the chair beside her. “A man dressed me upstairs,” he murmured, for her ears only. “Like I was a little child.”
---
“Back it up. You go to a barber for teeth? I don’t understand.”
“Well, here in the country, we can’t keep a full-time tooth puller employed That’s for the city and towns. Of course, there could be the blacksmith.”
The damn blacksmith again. It sounded like those guys could do everything from making a horseshoe to yanking out a rotten incisor to marrying you in a border town.
---
“How do you take your tea?” she asked, pouring two porcelain cups.
“Not sure. Can’t say I’ve drunk much before coming here. Why don’t you give me the works?”
She was torn between the urge to laugh and the desire to scream, compromising with a gasp. “Milk and lemon?”
“Sure. Sounds good. And sugar.” His gaze trailed around the room’s unpretentious interior as if he wasn’t being infuriating.
“One can have milk and sugar. Or sugar and lemon. But not all three.”
---
“This feels more romantic to me than…” She inclined her head to the couple busy cooing. “Out there, I can imagine feelings get very stark, almost painful. There are no distractions to your thoughts, so it’s you and your ugly heart against the horizon.”
“Ugly heart? That doesn’t sound very poetic.”
“But it’s true.” She pressed her lips to his ear. “Real hearts aren’t happy all the time. And they aren’t perfect. They get angry, envy, hunger for more, and still crave. But we are all beautiful in our ugly little ways as well. At least that is what I think.”
---
“Am I doing it right?” she murmured into his mouth.
“You’re perfect.” He pulled back, and his breath ghosted across her cheek. “Would you like more?”
“Yes. Teach me.”
“That’s a good girl.” This time, he opened his mouth, coaxing her to do the same; she responded and, with slow, almost arching deliberation, he stroked his tongue against hers.
---
Tuck tried to take it all in. This dude was going to shoot him for marrying his sister? And do so wearing those neck ruffles? The past was way more hardcore than he gave it credit for.
---
Tuck braced her against the tree and stood between her legs, his big hands gripping her bottom as he looked down at her, a muscle feathering in the place where his jaw met his temple.
“You’re so smart, Lizzy,” he growled. “But sometimes you’re so smart that it also makes you a little stupid.” She shivered as he dipped his head, his breath warm against her throat. “Trust me, you have no problem bewitching a man.”
Her hands, which had been pushing against his shoulders, did a sudden reversal, even without conscious thought; she was now gripping him, driving him closer.
“All I can think about is doing this to you,” he rasped, rimming his tongue along the curve of her neck before drawing the skin between his teeth for a soft nip. She bowed, her center arching into him. “This and nothing else.”
---
He hiked her skirts to her waist, nudged her legs apart.
“Open for me,” he ordered. And God help her, she did. Was he going to make her his wife in truth here against a willow on the edge of an out-of-the-way Gretna Green sheep paddock?
But he wasn’t removing his breeches, he was sinking to his knees in the wet grass.
---
“Please put me down,” she whispered.
He cocked a brow, let his gaze travel leisurely to her mouth and longer. “And if I don’t?” He wasn’t serious. But he wanted to see what she’d do.
“I’d consider screaming, but I wouldn’t want to make myself a spectacle. So maybe I’d purse my lips like that. And then when you get close, I’d…” She arched up, snapping her teeth.
“Christ.” He startled, setting her back on her feet. “You’re a wild animal.”
---
“Husband,” Lizzy breathed a few minutes later as he entered the carriage. “My dear wicked husband. Are you here to have your evil way with me? I tried to find you everywhere, but only ran into grouchy old Henry.”
“Lizzy. Baby. I can see you have had too much to drink. I think it would be best if you sat still and we cracked a window to let in some air.”
“You can crack my window,” she purred, reaching over to brace her hands on his knee. “Because tonight I will ride on St. George all the way to where dragons live.”
 

 
Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- hero gets into a car accident on page to avoid hitting a boy and dog and goes underwater in a pond
- hero has had cancer in the past and there is discussion and remembrance of it, though he’s now recovered
- parental death
- unlikable parents/family
- death of a side character
Author content warnings? Didn’t see any

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex aspects, consent, pregnancy/child in the story:

Safe sex: 

  No, but the hero is sterile 

Hows the consent? 

  It’s good! 

Pregnancy/children in story? (Please note this is the best to my memory/note taking. If you see something I missed please feel free to message!) 

  There is no pregnancy or children in the story. The heroine doesn’t want children and the hero is sterile so this is a child free HEA 

41% - 🔥 heroine self pleasure

Her hips began to rock. What would it be like if someone else were to touch her like this? She bit her lip hard enough to taste a vague copper tang.
Imagine Tuck’s thick strong fingerings here on her delicate, wet softness.

43% - 🔥 hero self pleasure in the stables

“Fuck.” He muttered after a long pause. There wasn’t a choice. He needed release.

49% - kiss
56% - 🔥 oral against a tree

She didn’t know why he kneeled or looked at her like a man starving. “What do you want?” Her question was a half whisper, half plea.
“To taste you.” He nodded at her exposed center that he still held open. “Can I?”
“D-do people really do such things? It’s not just in books.”
“If they see a pussy like yours? They’d beg to. Do you want me to beg, Lizzy?”

61% - kiss
78% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her, missionary, followed soon after with her on top

“You love it when I touch you.”
She opened her mouth to reply and he nipped her lower lip. “That wasn’t a question.” Her hips jerked as he slid his palm down, capturing the weight of her breast. With a thumb, he teased her nipple, growling when it peaked even through the layers of fabric. “And you like that.”
A hitched gasp.
“Good girl.”

85% - kiss
88% - 🔥 fingering for her, oral for her, missionary

“Oh no, I don’t think so.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Look down and see what I’m doing to you.”
She liked her lips before opening one eye and then the other.
“That’s it,” he growled. “I want you to know who is taking you so good.”

96% - kiss