PUCK...yuck.

PUCK
SAMANTHA ALLEN
Zando (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending June 16, 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.

HE'S TO DIE FOR, fun, entertaining gay rom-com/mystery with good opposites attract energy

HE'S TO DIE FOR
ERIN DUNN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Brooklyn 99 meets The Charm Offensive in this sparkling romantic murder it's murder cute in the first degree when a detective finds himself falling for the lead suspect in a career-making case.

At 29, Detective Rav Trivedi is the youngest member of the NYPD’s homicide squad, and his future looks bright. He may be a bit of an outsider in the department—an ivy-league educated gay Brit with a weakness for designer suits—but his meteoric rise and solve rate prove he belongs.

So when his CO assigns him lead on the high-profile murder of a record executive, Rav is ready for action. He won’t be distracted by TV crews, tabloids, or what’s trending on social media, nor by the ridiculously hot rock star with a clear motive and no alibi.

This is it, his shot, and he is not going to screw it up—certainly not by falling in love with his number one suspect…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Told in third person from Rav's PoV, this story of opposites attracting is the exact kind of cuteness booster-shot of a story I've been needing as my world darkens. You'll note the link above to my review of The Charm Offensive, which was a good story well-told, much the way this one is.

What makes it a half-star less of a good read than that one is really simple: Switching the PoV from the anxiety-suffering character to the neurotypical character lessens the impact of anxiety into the (ironically) anxiety-inducing "this is a burden" feeling that all anxiety-suffering people I've ever known dread.

I'll also mention the mystery plot was...underwhelming...though not in any way substandard. Given how much time it took up, it was as thorough as it could be in being a mystery; it's akin to a mystery short story, though, and those are never top of the heap for me. I'll also bring up the low-steam aspect of the romance, to be fully informative. It was fine for me because it was one strand of the story among several.

It sounds as though I didn't like the story, and I promise I did! I loved the way these two really different men learned to talk to, not at or past, each other. I liked the moments of sweet sharing, bringing each other into the other man's thought processes and history. I battened on the sense that they were building something for each other, out of themselves, as a loving demonstration of need. That it was done using both humor and flirtatious silliness was the way it made me invest in it not simply roll my eyes.

It's in that context that Rav and Jack connected most deeply...their struggles to be able/allowed to exercise their strengths to really satisfying degrees. Rav's very pretty, very posh, and very much expected to glide through his job while making the department look good. Doing actual detective work? Not really in the cards. Like Jack, he's supposed to do and keep doing what others want. Unlike Jack, Rav doesn't get panic attacks that are used against him.

All told a really enjoyable summer's afternoon of reading. I hope to see more from Author Dunn, and might even pick up a book two of these men if one appeared.