Pucking Around

“[Tess is] a smokin’ hot size twenty with a perfect, pear-shaped body.”

This description of Rachel’s best friend Tess introduces body positivity to the novel. This notion that fatness is not antithetical to beauty (and that “fat” is a neutral descriptor rather than an inherently negative one) has gained increasing prevalence in romance novels in the last several decades as the genre has turned away from the more restrictive beauty standards of its previous iterations.

“Americans always do that—smile when they don’t mean it. I suppose it’s meant to put people at ease, and it works on most other Americans. To me, it always comes off as disingenuous.”

Ilmari notes a cultural difference between Americans and Finns that highlights one of the forms of disorientation that an immigrant may face when dealing with an unfamiliar cultural norm. Even as he recognizes what the smile is supposed to mean, Ilmari’s first reaction to the faked smile is that of his home culture, which is discomfort.

“She’s got a hot goth girl vibe going, so at odds with the preppy, All-American look of an NHL team.”

The description of an NHL team as “All-American” underscores one of the criticisms of the hockey romance genre, which is its lack of diversity. While Rath’s pairing of “All-American” with “preppy” suggests that the term is used to describe a certain kind of style, the phrase “All-American” has historically connoted whiteness as well as a conservative appeal. This in turn bears connections to racist ideologies of what constitutes “inoffensive” styles.