The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid

[lightreads]

The Shots You Take

3/5. Another one of these M/M hockey romances. This one is even less about hockey than usual – old estranged teammates reconnect post retirement when one’s father dies. They have a lot of baggage having to do with how they used to sleep together, and one of them was in love and one of them had a lot of internalized homophobia.

I mean, I suppose someone did have to title a hockey romance that at some point.

Anyway, this one is nice, particularly for having actual adults in it. It also successfully walks that tough line where one half of the pairing treated the other half very poorly in the past, and there’s a lot of justifiable anger, but it is a romance after all so we have to retain some sympathy for both sides. So yeah, I liked this one fine. I’m not liking any romance more than fine at the moment, though, so who even knows what’s good anymore.

Content notes: Parental death and the raw aftermath.

Comments

[cyphomandra]

I got too annoyed with Adam’s casual neglect of his kids for this one to work for me (but I also dislike small town romances, so that didn’t help). I do wish Reid would manage to write another character with as much edge and appeal as Ilya.

[lightreads]

Yeah, I was willing to go with it until we had the kids actually appear and the dynamic was so weird. But yes, to your point, I think we all know where this series peaked.