Ashley Jaswal knows hockey well enough to coach it, but her family credits her brother’s success to her attendance. That’s the detail in Sonya Lalli’s As Luck Would Have It that gets under my skin—not the handsome captain, not the celebrity breakup. A woman has actual expertise, and somehow her most important assignment is sitting in the right seat.
I kept returning to that setup while putting away Luna’s leash after an evening walk. The familiar irritation: loving your family and still wanting your evening back.
Ash’s coaching matters more than her supposed luck
Ash’s family believes she’s a good-luck charm for her brother Jas, a new Vancouver Canucks draft pick. Their expectation that she attend his games consumes the time she might otherwise spend building a personal life. Hockey is already her work; now it organizes her family obligations, too.
What interests me is how difficult that demand would be to argue against. Nobody has to say her needs don’t matter. They can simply insist that showing up matters more. And once attendance becomes linked to Jas’s performance, declining an invitation stops feeling like an ordinary scheduling decision. It becomes a possible betrayal.
That makes Ash’s combination of professional assertiveness and family compliance believable to me. Knowing how to challenge someone at the rink doesn’t mean you know how to disappoint people you love. I don’t need a heroine to demonstrate perfect boundaries before I’ll take her seriously. I need the story to recognize what those boundaries cost her. That cost is exactly what I listen for, and it's why I keep coming back to Piper Rayne—Countdown to a Kiss treats family ties as load-bearing rather than backdrop, the same way Lalli does here.
The listener praise for realistic family dynamics is encouraging here. So is the emphasis on Ash learning to accept love. But accepting love and accepting demands aren’t the same thing, and that distinction is where this premise has the most to offer. I’m more interested in whether Ash gets room to choose than whether everyone eventually approves of her choice.
Devin can’t offer an escape from hockey
Initially, Devin Snyder looks like the obvious distraction: Canucks captain, attractive, apparently arrogant, newly separated from a global pop star after a scandalous breakup. Plenty of ingredients for antagonism and attraction.
Then there’s the complication I like better. He’s Jas’s teammate. Ash can’t pursue him without becoming more entangled in the very hockey world already taking up her calendar. This isn’t a romance that promises her an entirely separate life. It asks whether she can claim something for herself inside the life she already has.
Devin’s public breakup also puts an interesting pressure beside Ash’s family superstition. Other people have decided what his romantic life means; other people have decided what her presence at a game means. Those pressures aren’t equivalent, but both leave little space for the person underneath the story everyone else prefers.
That gives the attraction somewhere useful to go beyond trading insults. My reservation is about balance. Some listeners found Ashley relatable and the romance affecting; one dissatisfied response found too much self-pity and too little romance. If you want the family conflict to complicate the flirting, that sounds promising. If you want it cleared away quickly so the couple can get on with things—less so. Listeners who want a genuinely lighter night's listen do have Under the Mistletoe waiting—Ali Hazelwood's holiday collection keeps things banter-forward and comparatively low-stakes.
And don’t mistake the sports-romance packaging for a guarantee of lightness. Reported content includes past child abuse, racism, misogyny, slut-shaming, and victim-blaming, alongside open-door sex.
Before you buy, listen for Jas
Amrit Kaur’s portrayal of Ashley receives the most useful praise: listeners single out changes in intonation that give her more dimensions than constant exasperation. For this particular heroine, that matters. Ash needs to register as a coach, a sister, and someone experiencing desire—not just a woman irritated by all three roles.
The purchasing risk is Kaur’s male characterization. Several listeners found those voices strained; one described Jas as sounding teeth-clenched. Others enjoyed the performance, so this isn’t a universal objection. Still, Jas isn’t a disposable side character. If his voice bothers you, the family-pressure plot means you probably won’t be able to ignore it.
Awkward pauses also appear in the feedback. My usual 1.25x would be a starting point, not a remedy: faster playback won’t make an uncomfortable vocal choice comfortable.
At 9 hours and 37 minutes, I’d wait for a sale and sample an exchange involving Jas or Devin before buying. You’re getting a hockey romance whose strongest hook is Ash’s struggle for autonomy, with a performance that appears stronger around its heroine than its men. That trade-off is worth considering—not waving away because the premise sounds fun.
