PUCK
SAMANTHA ALLEN
Zando (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 2 June 2026
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In this A Midsummer Night's Dream-inspired romcom, Puck is a reality show producer and agent of chaos with a talent for bringing people together . . . and tearing them apart.
Meet Puck: the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind "Homewreckers", a dating show that puts troubled couples through hell—with a little help from their exes. Used to being the one pulling the strings, it shocks Puck when their life undergoes a plot twist of its own and their college roommate Mia announces her engagement to her ex’s best friend, Damon. Having only recently broken up with longtime-boyfriend Zander, and never having had much in common with Damon (who lovesick Lena has always pined after), Mia’s news leaves her friend group reeling—and Puck’s mind whirling.
When they arrive for a week of wedding festivities at an upscale resort in the Appalachian forest, Puck immediately sees that Mia’s marriage will lead to misery, and takes it upon themself to save their friends by rearranging the couples—without anyone finding out. But as Puck comes up against a type-A maid of honor hell-bent on making this wedding happen, it becomes clear that they will have to deliver the greatest stunt of their career. If only they can take their eyes off the bridesmaid. After all, the course of true love never did run smooth…
Written with Samantha Allen’s signature charm, wit, and an irresistible dose of Shakespearian mischief, Puck is the ultimate romcom for our chaotic era, and a celebration of the friendships that carry us through it all.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I've read reality-TV plots before, and liked them fine. I dislike Puck as much as it is possible to dislike a fictional character.
Controlling and manipulative are the core qualities a producer/director must have. The Creative Types series got uniformly good reviews from me, and controlling manipulative producer/director types abounded. LOVE, HATE & CLICKBAIT had the same. I liked it, too. All these stories were chock-a-block with cynical, manipulative controlling people.
Puck is the first one of the producers to feel sociopathic, actually uncaring in their actions...as in not really interested or invested in a positive outcome of some sort. Their impulse to derail the train heading for a genuine disaster was, it felt to me as I read along, much the same "I will because I can and y'all sort out the pieces once I've had my laugh" as in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I'm glad I read the whole story. I'm supposed to see the easy, wealth-lubricated hum of a stage play wedding as hollow and shallow and doomed to failure. So Puck blowing all those things up? Well, why not they were going to blow up anyway.
I found the idea of Puck's in-universe TV show, Homewreckers, to be as repugnant as The Traitors all y'all seem to lap up. I'm not going off on a rant about how vicious all these craptastic shows feel to me...entertain y'all's selves how you see fit...but absent some tinge of positive motivation, some twinge of conscience or at least awareness that the playing cards being shuffled by Puck are people with feelings, I'm not recommending the read.
The prose is charmingly descriptive, the surfaces ae glossy, the dialogue had a brittle wit to it.
And I disliked every page.
