Clara’s Verdict
I have been watching the hockey romance subgenre with interest for some time now, and Becka Mack’s Consider Me is one of the clearer signals that the genre has genuine craft practitioners within it. This is Book 1 of the Playing for Keeps series, narrated by Kasha Kensington, and it does the thing sports romance does best when it is working: it builds a hero who is both extremely attractive and genuinely worth liking as a person. Carter Beckett is the NHL’s resident bad boy on the surface and something considerably more vulnerable and generous underneath. The contrast is not merely the trope; it is the argument the book makes about men who perform arrogance as a form of armour against a world that has always delivered for them.
At 20 hours and 42 minutes, published by Podium Audio in September 2022 and rated 4.2 from 63 listeners, this is a substantial commitment in a genre where commitment is exactly what the reader is being invited to make.
About the Audiobook
Consider Me follows Olivia, whose internal narrative is the primary vehicle for the story, and Carter Beckett, whose public persona of arrogance gives way over the course of the novel to something more honest. The first-person female perspective is consistent throughout, which means we experience Carter entirely through Olivia’s observations and interpretations. This is both the novel’s strength and, for some readers, its limitation: we are never granted direct access to Carter’s interiority, which means his transformation must be shown through behaviour rather than explained through thought. Mack manages this challenge reasonably well.
The synopsis description of the novel as containing lots of heat, swoon, laughs, and a ride on an emotional roller coaster is accurate. The comedic dialogue is genuinely funny in the early sections, particularly the sparring between Olivia’s suspicion and Carter’s relentless, slightly bewildered generosity. The emotional stakes, when they arrive in the final third, are real rather than perfunctory. Carter’s capacity for generosity, his relationship with his family, his instinct to give rather than take, is convincingly detailed across the novel rather than merely asserted at the point when the reader needs to believe it.
The Narration
Kasha Kensington handles Olivia’s first-person voice with energy and a clear sense of the character’s particular brand of defensive wit. The comedic timing in the banter sequences is well calibrated. She does not let the jokes land too heavily or too lightly, which is the essential skill in this kind of dialogue-driven comedy. The longer romantic sequences, where the tone shifts from comedy to genuine vulnerability, are managed smoothly across what is a very long runtime.
The choice to use a single narrator rather than a dual-narrator format is worth noting. In first-person romance, this is the natural choice, but it means Carter is rendered only through Olivia’s voice, which can occasionally feel one-dimensional in the moments when his emotional experience seems to demand more direct expression. Kensington does what she can with the material, and the result is a consistent and engaging performance throughout the full 20 hours.
What Readers Say
The response from the 63 listener reviews is enthusiastic with some honest reservations. Multiple reviewers describe Carter as having golden retriever energy, an affectionate shorthand for a certain kind of hockey romance hero: big, warm, devoted, slightly chaotic in the best way. Several describe the book as laugh-out-loud funny, particularly in the early chapters. The critical responses focus on two recurring observations: the length, which some found slightly over-extended, and a note that Olivia’s height is mentioned rather too frequently across the novel’s full span. This second criticism appears in enough reviews to suggest it is a genuine readerly irritant rather than one reader’s idiosyncrasy.
Nobody found the book without merit. The 4.2 average across 63 listeners reflects genuine affection with some reservation about execution, which is an honest result for an ambitious debut series opener that asks readers to invest 20 hours in two characters.
Who Should Listen?
The series’s longevity since its 2022 publication, and the existence of subsequent Playing for Keeps volumes, suggests that Mack built something here that readers wanted to continue with. A first novel in a series that arrives at 20 hours is a significant commitment to ask of an audience, and the 63 reviews indicate a readership that made that commitment and mostly found it worthwhile. The series form of hockey romance tends to reward investment: characters from Book 1 reappear with different roles in later volumes, and the emotional continuity builds across books.
For listeners who enjoy sports romance and want a well-developed relationship arc with genuine warmth and comedy, this is a confident recommendation. The series is worth beginning at Book 1; the character relationships are established here and paid off across subsequent volumes. Those who find sporting settings uninteresting may not engage fully with the NHL backdrop, though the hockey functions more as atmosphere and character context than as detailed subject matter. Listeners who prefer their romance more emotionally complex and less tonally comedic will find the register slightly too light for their tastes. For the target audience, this is a well-executed and generous entry into a popular and durable subgenre.
Consider Me is available on Audible UK. Listen on Audible UK
