Merry with a Hat Trick – Britney Bell

1 star

I had pretty high expectations for Merry with a Hat Trick, but the execution kind of fell flat. The premise is that Jayden frequently sees hockey captain Ryder at the bar and grill that she works at and develops a crush on him. Ryder is having an off season and figures that if he has a girlfriend, then things will be better. See where I’m going here?

Things kind of go off the rails a bit. Ryder goes to these parties for a dating service called Match Me Bunny. The parties seem invite only, but somehow or another, Jayden is going to attend one until Ryder pulls her away. Then, later in their fake dating relationship, she looks up the site and decides that Ryder’s desires might be too much for her without really knowing what they are. If she was going to that party at the start, wouldn’t she have had an idea about the company? How did she get an invite or know where it was?

And the theater scene….I’m sorry, but how were those two not caught? When you’re being that obvious about what you’re doing, there’s no conceivable way that everyone in that theater didn’t know, and you’d get caught.

This felt like the author was just checking off boxes on a list of what a hockey fake dating romance should be. Parts of it conflicted, weren’t fully explained, or just plain didn’t make sense. At the end, j found myself more confused and questioning than anything else.