"I'd like to live a small life, I think."


I really love these sad hockey players. This was so much quieter than Rachel Reid's previous books, with minimal hockey, but I think that was exactly right for this story and these characters. I actually loved just how quiet it was, with most of the book taking place over the course of a week in a small town in Nova Scotia.

I'm convinced Rachel Reid is a wizard that uses her powers to make me emotionally invested in sad fictional hockey players and their love lives. I hope she never stops.

I love a second chance romance, and one with this much of a time gap between the two protagonists? I ate it up. So much growth and grief happened while they were apart, and watching both Riley and Adam try to process that and grow together? God, it's so GOOD.

Reid has such a way of weaving so many different emotions and important topics into her stories, it hooks you from the first page and THE SHOTS YOU TAKE is no different. I was rooting for these two idiots in their twenties just as much as in their forties.

Another aspect I super appreciated about this is the fact that both characters are older. They've lived a good deal of their lives apart, and using all that world experience to reconnect and fall in love (again) just made the story that much richer.

Honestly, I will drop everything for a Rachel Reid book, and I'm so glad I scooped this one up as quickly as I did. Stick taps for days.