Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, antigay bias, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.

Like many contemporary romance novelists, Emily Rath has built on the world established in her first novel to create a series that further explores that novel’s characters and themes. The Jacksonville Rays series follows the lives of the players and staff members of Jacksonville’s new NHL hockey team. Building on the close-knit group of players from the first novel, Pucking Around, the series as a whole delves into the characters’ roles within the team as well as their relationships with the people who surround it. 

Pucking Around follows the story of Rachel Price, a new medic for the Rays, as she falls in love with players Jake Compton and Ilmari Kinnunen, as well as the equipment manager, Caleb Sanford. The book shows the characters navigating their relationships with one another and the team as a whole while also coming to terms with the social complexities of their orientations and relationship structures (the polyamorous relationships that Rath explores in Pucking Around feature in many of her novels, including Pucking Sweet, the third novel in the series). The characters of Pucking Around all play important parts in the plot of Pucking Wild, where Rachel and her husbands help and support Tess while beginning their married life together.