Posted by
Lara
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/the-shots-you-take-by-rachel-reid/
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?post_type=reviews&p=166271
I’m not even going to pretend that I picked this book up by chance. I had meant to read it last year when it came out, but didn’t. I don’t know why. I don’t have a good reason. Post-Heated Rivalry TV show obsession, I remembered I had this novel waiting for me on my Kindle. I started it last night when I got in bed. I read it while I was pumping milk in the middle of the night. I read it when I woke up at 4am because it was hot already. I read it through my work day, ignoring the furious pings from my work computer. I just finished it now. It’s 11:35 and I’ve sent one work-related email today. Otherwise I have been reading. Such is the power of it.
Adam and Riley both played professional hockey for a Toronto team. They were best friends with benefits, but Adam always shied away from them being more. Adam married a woman and had kids. Riley moved to another hockey team and went decidedly off the rails thanks to a problem with alcohol and an undiagnosed mental illness. Riley left professional hockey behind and moved home to his small town in Nova Scotia. Adam carried on playing for Toronto. When the book opens they haven’t spoken to each other in 12 years. But have they been in love with each other the whole time? YOU BETCHA!
Second chance romance is tough to get right because the reason that it didn’t work out needs to balance with the love that pushes them back together. For the first 50% Riley is mad at Adam and he needs to be. Through his cowardice (not saying “I love you” back even though he felt it, etc.), Adam really let Riley down, but it was Riley who ultimately severed ties with Adam (to save his sanity). So both have some blame but it is Adam that has to do the grovelling. And he grovels beautifully.
The character development for both is great! In the intervening years, Riley has worked hard to reach stability, but growth rockets for both of them when they’re in each other’s lives again. Adam has to learn to be an out gay man and Riley has to learn to trust again.
A slightly spoilery note about sexuality
Incidentally, while Adam spends a decade married to a woman and has two children with her, when he does decide to speak freely about his sexuality, he describes himself as gay.
These are giant emotions and as a reader, those emotions put me through a workout, in a good way.
Everything about their history and their past and present is a mess. The particular nature of the mess is revealed in bits and pieces as you read and you only have the full picture of the breakdown in their relationship after the halfway point, so I won’t go into specifics here.
Given how badly messed up things were between them at the end and how much ground they have to cover, is there a third act break up?
Show Spoiler
No! Instead there is a steady, inexorable, exhilarating build of emotion until they confess their endless love for each other. It’s glorious!
The sex is hot and in keeping with the kind of breathless besottedness they both feel. The way they love and explore each other’s bodies, bodies that have changed and not changed over the twenty-odd years since they first had sex, well, it’s mesmerizing.
There is so much emotion packed into this book. Big ones (the size of their love is extraordinary), overwhelming ones (predominantly around Adam getting to grips with his sexuality), messy ones (“you hurt me and I still love you and I want you to go away but I also want you to stay”). All of them!
And all of them were handled with such care. As a reader I felt safe letting my own emotions run with the story, knowing that they would be managed capably and my heart would glow by the end of it. And it did!
If you’re looking for a book that packs an emotional punch but is going to have you beaming with your whole body by the end, then this is the one for you. I heartily recommend it to the Bitchery.
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/the-shots-you-take-by-rachel-reid/
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/?post_type=reviews&p=166271