The other night, my fiancé and I were discussing the various meanings of the term “hat trick”. You don’t need to know why. I happened to mention that regardless of the slang definitions, the original meaning of the term was three goals made by the same player in a hockey game. He was shocked that I knew this, which is fair. I am not a sports girlie. My knowledge of this comes entirely from the hockey romance genre, and I told him so.
My fiancé was absolutely floored to discover that such a thing exists. He is not a romance reader, he mostly reads graphic novels and some sci-fi. But given that he lives with me, he understands the basic gist of a romance novel.
A hockey romance is essentially a sub-genre of contemporary romance, where the characters exist in the modern real(ish) world. In sports romances, one or more main characters is an athlete. In hockey romances specifically, one or more main characters are hockey players.
As I explained, more questions arose. He was very confused as to why hockey is the sport that dominates the top sports romance charts. He seemed mildly offended that football was not better represented among the sports romances, although he did concede that baseball is decidedly unsexy.
So why is hockey romance so much more popular than other sports romances? My theory is those exercises they do on the ice in combination with the sort of primal violence involved. It’s hot, even for people who could care less about hockey. There’s also something to be said for the idea that the concept simply went viral. BookTok took off with the hockey romance, so more people are reading them, and subsequently more people are writing them.
Then the conversation inevitably found its way to Pucking Around, my favorite of the hockey romances. Upon hearing the title, my fiancé burst out into laughter. He said it sounds like I have to read this, at which point I blushed so hard that his curiosity was piqued and I had to explain to him the premise of the book.
He was no longer just laughing, we were now both in hysterical fits of giggles. As it turns out, explaining the plot of a polyamorous hockey romance to someone who has never read such a thing in their lives is a bit of a journey. You learn something new every day, and that day my fiancé learned about the wonderful world of hockey romance. If you haven’t yet wandered into the hockey romance section, it might be worth a try, if only from the hilarity that ensues from trying to explain it to a man.
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