I am actually sick to my stomach over how much I loved this book. The perfect combination of grief, unrequited longing, late-in-life gay awakenings, and second chance romance. I could scream. If you're looking for a pure hockey romance, this isn't quite it - both MCs are since retired (one for a while, one more recently), but you get enough references to the game and their time together as teammates to satisfy a fan of the genre.

I have liked a lot of Rachel Reid’s books but this one takes the cake. I read it in a single sitting. It’s almost midnight and I literally NEVER stay up this late I cannot stress how much I loved this book. It might be because I'm older myself, but it's just such a beautiful, heartbreaking romance. And funny! And spicy! It's firing on all cylinders and has something for everyone.

10/10, five stars, no notes. Highly recommend this one. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This heartfelt gay romance is a beautiful and moving meditation on grief and second chances. Two retired hockey players - former teammates, best friends, and sometimes lovers-on-the-sly - reunite at a funeral in a small town in Nova Scotia, and try to find a way to heal the harm they've done each other. I was deeply moved.

"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.