1.75 stars - This is bad.

I am a hockey fan and love reading hockey romance. I wanted love and enjoy reading Lexi LaFleur Brown’s romance too. I really wanted this to be good it’s why I requested an arc. But wow was this a struggle to get through.

The main character was a caricature of what the author considers to be a cool girl. It’s mentioned multiple times how COOL Lucy is. Like okay? Maybe show me instead of telling me how cool and different and quirky she is. It was abundantly clear the author desperately wanted to be this FMC.

Jaylen was the only redeeming factor about this book but only because he was sort of boring. I suppose she stayed realistic to hockey players but it all just ended up trite.

I know this is being marketed as a queer book, and I’m not saying it isn’t. But man it would have been cool if all the queer characters hadn’t been boiled down to overused tropes. The gay best friend was sassy and mean, worked as a barista, and was the FMC’s sex confidant. The lesbian best friend was getting too serious too quickly with a woman who lived in her van. The last bisexual woman Lucy dated actually had a serious boyfriend the entire time and never told Lucy. Lucy (also a bisexual woman) herself is described as promiscuous and flighty in the beginning. It was like a running list of queer tropes with check marks beside each. I wouldn’t have minded one or two, but it truly felt like that was all she could come up with.

I’d also like to say, as a queer woman, a few stereotype jokes I can enjoy and get in on the joke. But every single remark about a queer person was a stereotype joke and it ended up feeling unwelcoming and harmful.

I almost don’t want to even get into the dialogue and zeitgeist overload. I get she wanted to be topical and funny but at some point I started to wonder if brands were getting some sort of kickback with the way they were mentioned. Every other paragraph a nod to a current pop culture moment was shoehorned in. It was exhausting. The dialogue was cringey and elementary.

I really expected so much more and was just disappointed.

🖌 Dual POVs
🏒 Painter & Hockey Player
🖌 LGBTQIA+ Rep
🏒 Mental Health Rep
🖌 Tattooed FMC
🏒 Sports Romance
🖌 One Night Stand
🏒 Diversity
🖌 Third Act Breakup

🩵 Mention of Panic Attacks
🩵 Mention of Grief

Lucy and Jaylen shared one night together. They thought it was the last time they would see each other. Well, the universe had other plans for them.

Lucy has not touched a paint brush for several years. She had to paint a mural in order to good terms for a tattoo apprenticeship. Guess who she saw at the same ice rink she was working at. Yes! Jaylen! He thought he was returning home that night until circumstances changed.

Jaylen noticed good things happened around Lucy. He deemed her as his good luck charm. It's funny that more accidents towards Lucy when she's around Jaylen. They became close to each other. When Jaylen discovered his panic attacks, Lucy was there for him. When Lucy met up with someone from her past, Jaylen was there for her. They were right for each other.

The only thing I didn't like was when Lucy was trying to pick a fight with Jaylen. Communication is key. I'm glad she found her true passion again with painting and with someone who cares about her. Jaylen is with someone who noticed him for him. That's so sweet!

I can safely say that the vibes of this book are like no other hockey romance out there, and I’m here for it! I was so excited to read this because I’m a hockey romance reader turned hockey fan, thanks to Lexie LaFleur Brown‘s videos. Not only was this book fun to read, but it had some surprises in subject matter. The character arcs tackled mental health, grief, and generational trauma. I was impressed by the handling of these topics in a way that made the characters feel relatable. The side characters were effective in moving Lucy and Jalen’s stories along, making them feel like dynamic people with full lives. When the couple came together as an unexpected pairing, they brought out the best in each other, and got their HEA.

Thank you to NetGalley, Lexi LaFleur Brown, and the publishers for this ARC ebook for me to read! I found this author on TikTok where she mentioned this book was a hockey romance with LGBTQIA+ and POC rep and I ran to NetGalley as fast as I could to request it.

I really enjoyed this book! It reminded me a lot of the Hannah Grace and Tessa Bailey books I’ve read in the past. I enjoy hockey a lot and liked the way that Lexi integrated not only the fact that JJ is a hockey player, but also included scenes during the games and terms/lingo from hockey. It really made it feel like she knew what she was writing about and wasn’t just writing about hockey players just to write about hockey players.

I really loved the queer representation in the book and that in addition to the queer best friend tropes that Lucy is bisexual. I cracked up so many times at the queer coded jokes and the scenes with Cooper and Maya were some of my favorite in the books. I found myself actually laughing at loud at their sarcastic conversations.

⭐️4.5

3.5/5

i follow the author on tiktok and as soon as i found out she was writing a hockey romance i had to have it.

jaylen and lucy are a cute, funny and supportive couple who i could root for the entire time.
lucy being jaylen’s good luck charm was the cherry on top of their dynamic before they start really falling for each other. nothing about their relationship or plot felt unrealistic and really enjoyed their individual plotlines that brought them together.

i wish we had gotten more intimate moments between the characters especially as their relationship was developing at certain points it felt more like we were just told about it rather than seeing these moments.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for access to this arc. all opinions are my own.

I was so excited when I saw that this book was coming out. I love following the author on social media and to see how she incorporated her hockey knowledge into the book was great. I felt some parts of the story were a little slow. But the characters made up for it.

“Why can’t you accept that you’ve changed my life and I want you in it forever?”

Shoot Your Shot is a quick, flirty read filled with banter and hard-hitting topics like mental health, career stress, and difficult family dynamics. if you’re in the mood for a hockey romance with a spitfire fmc, this one is for you!
—

this and that:
♡ artist x athlete
♡ dual pov
♡ he falls first
♡ hockey
♡ mental health x therapy
♡ one night stand turned situationship
♡ open door spice
♡ pop culture references
♡ queer rep
♡ seattle
♡ she’s his good luck charm
♡ sports romance
♡ tattooed fmc

triggers:
☞ alcoholism x addiction
☞ anxiety x panic attacks
☞ death of a loved one
☞ depression
☞ gang involvement (mentioned)
☞ parental abandonment

This one needs some work.

Jaylen is a flopped hockey player who just got cut from the NHL. He finds a string of good luck in Lucy, manic pixie dream girl aspiring tattoo artist.

There were a lot of issues here. I felt little chemistry between the two characters. They didn’t feel very fleshed out to me. They’re total opposites with a few common shared interests but huge lack of chemistry for me.

The spicy scenes were very rushed and borderline clinical in a few spots. I wish there was more hockey. The banter in the beginning was great but tapered off too quickly.

The author needs to work on “showing” rather than “telling” the story.

I had high hopes for this book. The author knows her hockey and has been promoting this book well on TikTok. Unfortunately, the main two characters are unlikeable and shallow. Lucy acts like being a mean girl is her personality, when it’s just a defence mechanism and JJ isn’t emotionally mature enough for a relationship.

I’m not staying that there was plagiarism, but earlier this month Lauren Blakely released a book with a male hockey player who called his love interest his “luck charm”, and his love interest was also an artist painting a mural at the hockey arena. Just seems odd to have two books so similar coming out so close together.

shoot your shot 🏒🍀

thank you to net galley and harlequin trade publishing/canary street press for this arc!

when i heard that dr. lexi lafleur brown, phD in hockey, hockey wags and all things hockey tea was writing a hockey romance book i was beyond excited!

the story was predictable as most hockey books and most debut books are, but it was so much fun and subverted a lot of tropes. LOVE the bisexual representation AND men’s mental health representation, something you don’t often get, especially as it relates to the pressures of a high intensity sport.

lexi’s hockey knowledge shines through and js way more realistic to the actual sport than your average hockey book.

also the characters just feel so real!! they’re flawed and make mistakes but they learn and grow and maybe make more mistakes again but they feel like real people.

thank you @lexilafleur and can’t wait for your next novel!

2.75 ⭐️

If I’m being honest the first sentence had me with this book, loved it! The banter was so cute, I loved how they began, the stealing a sign was such an iconic moment and I’m a sucker for the sunshine character that has anxiety and depression; the character depth to accomplish that is really nice to see.

In general all the queer rep and mental health representation was on point.

It wasn’t until the 63% mark that things kinda fell flat for me. The characters felt more telling than showing and the plot got too cliché for my taste. A lot of the drama near this point and to the end was extremely predictable and I just couldn’t get back into it.

Most of the things that happened near the end just felt rushed and lacking whatever charm it had in the first part of the book.

Plot: 4/10
Pace: 5/10
Ending: 3/10
Characters: 7/10
Enjoyability: 4/10
Writing Style: 3/10
Would I Recommend? Maybe
Favorite Character: Jaylen

Favorite Quote: ❝ Wait until you see the jerseys tonight for Pride night in action. It's going to be like if the Care Bears were violent. ❞ - Jaylen

Advanced Reader Copy Review:
I follow Lexi LeFleur Brown on TikTok and love her sarcastic style of humor, which made me very excited to read her debut romance novel. You can definitely see a lot of Brown's personality in the female main character, Lucy. This book is a promising start for a debut, and congrats on writing your first book, Lexi! This formulaic-style romance is full of humor, found family, and lots of hockey. I can't wait to see what you write next.

I was really looking forward to this one — I’ve followed Lexi on social media for a while & I love her content.

However, this book didn’t really do it for me. It felt very much like a debut author who was just like “well, I could write a romance novel!” I did appreciate how the hockey content seemed more realistic than other sports romances I’ve read & how the main character’s bisexuality wasn’t a major plot point — she just was.

Thanks to NetGalley & Harlequin for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I'm a big fan of Lexi's from TikTok so was excited when I got to read her book early with NetGalley. I liked that she has the actually knowledge of hockey and it's inner workings and that was shown throughout the book. Outside of the hockey aspects, she touches on mental health and I think handles it well and shows a positive relationship where they help each other through obstacles. It might just be me not loving miscommunication tropes, but found myself getting annoyed at Lucy often. While I liked this book, I didn't love it - I felt like they were trying to tackle too many themes at once, which could have been spread over more books.

Shoot Your Shot by Lexi LaFleur Brown is going to be a new favorite for all of the hockey fans out there who also really enjoy hockey romances. Lucy is doing her best in a terrible work situation as she works towards a tattoo apprenticeship. Jaylen is almost a has been hockey star trying to secure a roster spot with a PTO tryout. They meet on what had to be one of Jaylen’s worst nights and yet he is curious to know more about Lucy and relentless in his attempts to keep her attention. I really enjoyed seeing how Lucy was able to carve out her own career by finding her way back to her art through painting sporty murals. I have to believe that for Lucy, someone not particularly sporty (as she explains), this would have been such an odd way to find your way home to the work you love. I enjoyed both Lucy and Jaylen’s friends, the superstitions, the insider hockey moments, the mental health rep, and Lucy’s cat - Sailor.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the early edition of this book.

When Lexi Lafleur Brown said that she would use her hockey expertise to finally write an accurate hockey romance, I forgot that knowledge of a specific field is not the only thing it takes for a book to be good. I forgot about style and character development and consistency. It seems Dr. LaFleur Brown forgot about these things as well, because they were not found in this book!

Okay, cattiness aside: this book is bad. And I am a fan of Dr. LaFleur! I'm an NHL fan, a former women's hockey player, and have followed her on socials for years. I was SO excited for this book, and that's why I am so deeply disappointed that it's so bad. I'm tempted to give it 1 star, but it made me laugh a couple of times, so congrats on 2.

Dr. LaFleur knows hockey. All the hockey is super accurate. That has been her main marketing point since she started drafting, and it is obviously the only thing they have to sell. The plot itself is fine, though I think some of it is contrived and a little forced. I don't want to go into spoilers, but some of Lucy's choices were baffling. No sane real person would say or do some of the stuff she says and does, but I guess it needed to be that way for the plot, which is never a good reason.

Jaylen, on the other hand, was perfect. The worst thing Jaylen ever did was be depressed, which obviously is not a moral failing, and that's the problem. I get that romance is a fantasy, but if you take out the mental health, Jaylen is flawless, and that's just boring. Lucy is an insane person; the least we could do is give Jaylen something to apologize for, too.

My biggest gripe about this book, though, is the prose. This book reads like it was written by someone in high school. Every once in a while, there is a nugget of a nice line, but otherwise, it's a massive example of telling and not showing. EVERYTHING that is described is in the most plain, direct language possible. The backstories are told to us as narrative thoughts in the characters' minds. Even their feelings are just written out, leaving no space to interpret or actually feel anything. There was no artistry in any of it, and while some people think that romance isn't art, I think that's a disservice to the genre. There was room in this book for good, creative prose, and it just never arrived. The SMUT was the least sexy, most bland, nothingburger smut I have ever read. "He touched me. I moaned. He touched me again." Not a direct quote, but it might as well be. It was that boring.

There were also a BUNCH of little inconsistencies, like Lucy getting her story wrong or a sentence contradicting the one before it. I don't know if that's the fault of the author or the editor, but with everything else going on, it just added to my annoyance.

In the end, this book was a massive disappointment. Dr. LaFleur is a very intelligent woman, and I wanted this to be good, but holy shit hit up your local community college and take a creative writing class. Regardless of what BookTok might make you think, a book cannot subsist on banter and queer rep alone. If Dr. LaFleur didn't have a big online presence, this book would never have been published by a major house, and that is a big damn shame.

Shoot Your Shot by Lexi LaFleur Brown is a fun, flirty, and empowering romance that centers around taking chances—on love and in life. With a dynamic heroine and a swoon-worthy love interest, this novel combines laugh-out-loud moments, steamy chemistry, and heartfelt lessons about self-discovery. Brown’s witty dialogue and modern storytelling make this a perfect pick for fans of romantic comedies with a confident, unapologetic edge.

This book was exactly what I look for in a hockey romance. I loved the FMC and found her to be very sassy and fiery and said exactly what was on her mind. The MMC gave such golden retriever energy and I liked the balance between the two of them. It was an easy read and I loved how you could tell the author was so well versed in hockey!

This is such a cute hockey romance with pop culture references that will have you immediately in love with the FMC & MMC. Jaelyn & Lucy thought they’d just have a one night stand but luck keeps them coming back to each other. Honorable mention to lovable gay best friends. There is mental health and LGBTQ+ representation.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing and Canary Street Press for this E-Arc. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed Shoot Your Shot. A black cat FMC paired with a golden retriever MMC, fun side characters, believable hockey, some real impactful one liners and some light spice. I think there was really well-done character development from both of the protagonists that hit home on both ends. The book touches a little on mental health, family dynamics, drug addiction, racism and has some queer representation, that although not very deeply explored it was nice to see included in a hockey romance book. Especially one that had a BIPOC MMC in a genre where that's not the norm. With all that said I feel like the book could have been deeper; it felt like a fluffy romantic comedy that while sweet only really scratched the surface. I may not have felt that way if those topics were introduced but since they were- it left me wanting more.

My biggest issue was the pacing where some parts dragged a little which although not that long of a book did make me force through those parts. There also was a lot of telling/not showing which did take me out of the moment a little bit. This also includes some time skips in the relationship where I think things developed between the main characters, but we as readers missed out on much of that relationship growth.

Overall, I have not heard of Mx. LaFleur Brown before this book but am still impressed with their debut novel. I think the bones are here and was entertained reading it, I can't wait to see with what they come out with next.