There are few things in life that bring me as much joy as a scandalous, spicy, polyamorous hockey romance. Twisted Play by Poppy Jacobson is all of those things. This dark why choose is the first book in the Cruel Games duet, and it is truly an everything bagel in romance novel form (complimentary).
Eva’s father racked up a million dollars in debt to pay for her open-heart surgery, and now she has to find a way to pay it back. Jedidiah Carter — the billionaire who bought the debt — has an unusual way for her to pay it off.
She’ll get an internship working for the Yorkfield University hockey team and serve as Jedidiah’s spy. He wants to know everything about the team and its players to destroy the team from the inside.
Three obsessive men have other plans for her. When two of the players, and the team’s coach, find out what Eva is doing, they intend to make her pay…in the most delicious way they can think of.
Aleksander, Cole, and Tristan are all completely over-the-top with their aggressive brand of obsession. It makes the characters entertaining, but they still have depth to them.
The characters in Twisted Play form a kind of motley crew. This (eventual) polycule consists of a billionaire’s son, a hockey coach with bratva ties, a pretty regular dude, and Eva. By the end of this book, I was absolutely enamored with all four of them. They’re messy and a little insane, but I just loved them all the more for it.
Eva is a curvy heroine, and her size is a significant part of the story. Her love interests are turned on by her body, but Eva is self-conscious about it, and they use that to their advantage. It’s an unusual way of approaching body image in a romance novel, but it adds an interesting layer to the story, and it makes perfect sense for these characters.
All the drama and spice in this story is written in a way that makes it easy to read, and this is definitely a page turner. Unhinged obsession abounds, and while there is definitely a solid and fascinating plot, the spice is what really shines.
Every main character in this story is pansexual, so this is a polyamorous romance, although some of the relationships build more slowly than others. That said, the author jumps right in with a dubcon scene in the second chapter, and the spice remains consistently plentiful throughout.
There is intense and fiery chemistry within each individual relationship and the polycule as a whole. It’s quite kinky, with BDSM practiced in a wildly irresponsible way, which the author warned about in her author’s note. It makes for a very fun reading experience.
Twisted Play ends with an outrageously brutal cliffhanger, and fair warning, the next book won’t be published until April 2026. That said, I had so much fun with these four, and I can’t wait to read the next book, Vicious Wins, when it comes out next year.
Leave a Reply