Shoot Your Shot by Lexi LaFleur Brown

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3.5/5

Ok, honestly, I really don’t understand why this book has been getting so much hate. It’s cute! I mean, yeah, it’s your typical hockey romance just with an edgier side to it. I guess there was some discourse with the author on TikTok, but I make it a point not to get involved in Booktok drama, so I honestly don’t know anything about what happened. I went in blind and really enjoyed it!

Shoot Your Shot is your typical hockey romance. Set in Seattle, it follows black cat Lucy and golden retriever JJ. JJ is desperately trying to land a multi-year contract with the Seattle Rainiers NHL team. After a one-night stand with Lucy, JJ has the best game of his life. He decides that Lucy must have been the difference and asks her to be his lucky charm for the rest of the season. Lucy reluctantly agrees, but only if JJ will help her build her tattoo portfolio, so she can land a coveted tattoo apprenticeship.

When you’ve read as many hockey romances as I have, at some point, they all start to sound the same. This one, however, had a super unique main character that really stood out as different from other hockey fmc’s. Lucy is bisexual, edgy, covered in tattoos, and has complicated feelings about love. I really appreciated the queer positivity and mental health rep in this book. I especially love how JJ handled both of these topics. Green flags all around.

Lucy and JJ seem like two characters who would never work in a relationship but somehow do?? She’s got such black cat energy, and he is the total opposite—straight up golden retriever vibes. I loved that JJ was down bad for Lucy. He kept showing up for her and proving to her that he was different from other people she had dated in the past. I especially loved when JJ stood up to her father. Lucy deserved someone who would do that for her.

I also loved the side characters. JJ’s hockey bros and Lucy’s best friends provided hilarious comic relief. They were always up to something and meddling in their friend’s lives. JJ’s rookie teammates had me giggling with all their antics, especially in the epilogue.

Thank you to NetGalley, Lexi LaFleur Brown, and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions stated are my own.

loved this romance and finding love and remembering love before the one. love the friends and the chemistry between the couple was on fire and loved the banter.

Dr. Lexi LaFleur Brown's debut novel was a delight. I enjoyed the hapless events between Jaylen and Lucy and their awkward, funny banter as they got to know each other. I can see some readers being that do not care for miscommunication being frustrated by the third act conflict in this story. I did not mind it and liked to see the reality of Lucy's inner conflict. These characters felt very real and relatable as did their struggles. I look forward to reading what Brown has coming for us next!

Jaylen is a hockey player trying to make a comeback and he thinks Lucy is his lucky charm despite, Lucy feeling downing on her luck in her own career as an aspiring tattoo artist.

If you like the black cat/golden retriever trope, this book might be for you! Overall, I thought this book was a fun and quick read.

The open-door spicy scenes were plentiful and enjoyable.

I’m not a hockey fan, so I’m not going to comment on the hockey aspect of this book except to say that the story was still fun and understandable even though I don’t follow hockey.

Jaylen experiences anxiety attacks and his experiences seeking out therapy and medication for the first time is explored in the book, which I appreciated.

Lucy is bisexual, but the story doesn’t explore her identity, and it is not part of the plot.

Highlights:
- hockey player x artist
- mental health rep (anxiety)
- bi romance featuring M/F couple
- spicy!
- black cat x golden retriever

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book!

Unfortunately, Shoot Your Shot just wasn’t for me. I had high hopes going into it, especially because I love hockey romance. But this one dragged.

The story starts off with potential, but the writing style made it difficult to get invested in the characters or the plot. There was a lack of chemistry between the characters that really made it hard to care about their relationship. The pacing was uneven, and at times, it just felt like the story was dragging on with little progress. I found myself zoning out, waiting for something to grab my attention, but it never really did.

It’s always frustrating when the tone doesn’t match the vibe you’re expecting, and here, I just couldn’t get into the flow of it.

While I can see that this book might work for others, it just didn’t hit the mark for me. I ended up putting it down about halfway through.

If you are in your hockey romance era then you will want to read/listen to this book. I listened to the audiobook and I liked that there were two different narrators, especially since the book is told from two different perspectives. I like that it was a fake dating romance, sort of. The female character becomes his lucky charm. So they continue their deal of spending time together in order to make his season great. And she uses him to help advance her career. Smart woman. This is definitely a cute romance and will give you all the hockey vibes you need!

Thank you so much to Harlequin and Netgalley for the advanced audio of this book.

This was a fun romance between Lucy, the bisexual artist/aspiring tattoo artist and Jaylen (JJ), the professional hockey player fighting to keep his place in the league. They have a fun night together in Seattle, and with JJ expecting to leave town to find his next landing spot, they don't expect to see each other again. But when the Seattle Rainers ask JJ to stick around for a season, he finds himself crossing paths with Lucy once again.

It's a cute story, with Lucy becoming JJ's good luck charm during the season. I wasn't fully pulled into it, and I felt a bit of a disconnect with some of the writing, but overall it was a fun read, and the banter was entertaining.

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing, Canary Street Press, and NetGalley for the e-ARC to read and review. I didn't know anything about the author going into this, so that didn't influence my decision to read "Shoot Your Shot," nor does it sway my review at all! I've since learned that she's got a big social following and is married to a former NHL player, which is great background to add into this book. Unfortunately, even with that background, this book was incredibly lackluster to me, and some parts felt tedious to get through.

I've been thinking about why, and I think it's just that I didn't know about any of the characters' real motivations and goals beyond being told they had them, so there wasn't a ton for me to root for. Our main character Lucy wants to become a tattoo apprentice, but I truly have no idea why -- besides that she used to be a painter and has a lot of tattoos herself (something we're told enough throughout the story that it becomes annoying quickly). It seemed like she just decided to do this other thing on a random whim, so it's told to us in narrative, and so I couldn't care about it taking over her dreams. And our male lead Jaylen just simply isn't swoony: he's obsessed with his hockey career (as he should be! - but so much so that he seems a bit removed from everything else) and yet gets super clingy super fast and wants a serious relationship so quickly that Lucy even has trouble keeping up. I think it would have been really powerful to see Lucy on-page letting those guards down, but it just progresses without much internal change. I guess I don't see why these two even like each other, so it's hard to want them to find the balance that allows them to pursue their personal ambitions and their relationship together.

I also think this book tries to tackle a LOT of topics, from mental health to career goals to relationship evolutions to trauma/grief, to strained parental relationships, to professional athlete pressure, and more -- which is super ambitious of a task -- but many of them are kind of just underdeveloped subplots that take readers all over the place without making a solid point. I think Lexi clearly adds a lot of knowledge, passion, and ideas to this space, so I'd hope for a future work that brings the characters home a bit stronger!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for this ARC.

This book was 100 pages too long. It felt like so much filler and had very little to no substance in it for me. I absolutely hated Lucy. She was so obnoxious and was the worse character to read about. I only liked her in her relationship to JJ. He was the best part of this book and pretty much the only one I cared about. However, he was still aggravating because he was chasing after Lucy even though she keeps acting like a bitch. I truly don't like what this author has written but I can see other people liking it so I give it 2 stars.

2.5 ⭐️ I was really excited for this book, but I struggled through it. The hockey aspects were really good, but the rest was challenging for me.
For the first half of the book, I felt like there was too much going on. I couldn’t connect with either character, and their decisions felt really random. I liked the second half of the book better. We got to know Lucy and Jaylen a little bit better, and found out about some of their past trauma. This made some of the first half of the book make a little bit more sense, but I think there were too many plot points happening. I also didn’t feel like there was any real conflict, so their relationship fell a little flat for me.

Overall, there was just too much going on for me.
Thanks, NetGalley for the eARC

I really wanted to enjoy this more. I loved all the hockey but I had a really hard time connecting with the characters. There were just way too many stereotypes and it all fell a little flat to me.

It took me forever to read it and I felt myself leaning towards other reads instead. I’m a big fan of Lexi on social media so I’m really sad I didn’t enjoy it more.

This novel follows Lucy, an aspiring tattoo artist, and Jaylen, an NHL player who thought his career was over when they can't seem to get away from each other after a one-night stand. While working on a mural in his team's arena, Lucy becomes Jaylen's lucky charm.

I appreciate that this book included accurate hockey scenes during games, unlike most "hockey" romances I've encountered, but the story fell flat for me. It intrigued me initially but didn't keep me as engaged as I hoped it would. I enjoyed the character development and self-discovery that occurred in the story.

I love Lexi LaFleur Brown, but unfortunately, the plot and writing were not spectacular. I hope she can grow to create stories that complement the hockey knowledge she can demonstrate in the book space.

If you've been waiting for more accurate depictions of hockey in the sports romance space, you could enjoy this enough to look past the flaws. I do intend to read any books she may write in the future.

Overall, this book just wasn't it for me. I really wanted to enjoy it, and while I enjoyed the two main characters and all the supporting characters, the overall plot and relationship just fell flat for me. The hockey concept of it all was refreshingly accurate, and I did enjoy the realistic representation of sports rather than some romanticized and inaccurate depiction. I found myself more invested in J's story arc rather than L's, and I didn't love how she withheld information from him for a large portion of the book (re: her job life and potentially moving away). There were a quite a few cringe moments as well that made the book harder to get through. The general writing of the book was okay, it wasn't special or especially horrible but I wish it was better to get me more invested in the relationship. 2.5 stars overall

I wanted to love this one so badly, but sadly it fell short for me. I don’t want to take the rating on this book and I did not finish it so I will not be leaving public reviews on any of my socials.

I really do appreciate being given this book. I tried with everything in me to read this book, but I could only get a few pages in every time I picked it up. And I tried multiple times. This has absolutely nothing to do with the story or the author or the writing, I just wasn’t getting my attention like I really hoped it would. :(

I will more than likely come back around and try to read this books again. When and if I do I will be updating this review.

Please read this book if the blurb interests you!

This is cute romance about a superstitious hockey player. When he has a one night stand and gets picked up for a team the next day, he decides that the girl he spent the night with is his good luck charm.
For her part, aspiring tattoo artist Lucy thinks he’s crazy but she’ll take the money he offers her to send a good luck text before every game. She goes with him to charity events and starts going to his games, and before she knows it they’ve got feelings for each other.
I like the way their relationship unfolds. They’re charming characters and I enjoyed reading their story.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley, I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This was one of my highest anticipated reads from 2025 and to say that I was just okay with it was a pretty disappointing experience. And as someone who followed along on the author's journey when it started out as her reviewing hockey romances based on their NHL accuracy, I was excited when I heard she was writing a book because of her lived experience as an NHL WAG. And this book did have what I can assume is accurate depictions of what it is like to be involved with a professional hockey player and that is all good and well, but the romance part fell flat. And it made me realize that many hockey romance readers aren't really reading the books for the hockey accuracy and more for the romance. In saying that, I wished the romance was more focused on and that could be a result of this being her debut novel. I do want to recognize that as a queer person, the queer representation in correlation to sports was great and it made me feel very seen. I do think that if the author decides to pen another book, that it will be better than this given she will have more experience.

This review is incredibly hard to make since I am a big fan of the author on social media. But this book was bad, the LGBT characters felt like stereotypes and the attention to detail for the hockey life while great for authenticity, took away from the story. The FMC was unlikable

Review for Shoot Your Shot by Lexi LaFleur Brown

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5 stars)

Shoot Your Shot is a fast-paced, flirty sports romance that delivers plenty of chemistry, witty banter, and heartfelt moments. Lexi LaFleur Brown crafts an engaging story with characters who feel real and a romance that keeps you hooked.

The main characters had great chemistry, and I loved the push-and-pull dynamic between them. The tension and buildup were well done, making the payoff super satisfying. The sports setting added an extra layer of fun, though I would have liked a little more depth in certain emotional moments to really make the story hit harder.

Overall, this was a solid, entertaining romance that fans of sports romance will enjoy! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Thank you to Lexi LaFleur Brown, Harlequin books, and NetGalley for this e-ARC.

It took some time to get into this one because they had to gradually build a friendship before moving on to a slowly formed relationship. Because Jaylen and Lucy were such complicated characters, they were realistic in that sense and had a lot of setbacks to overcome before we began to see the beginnings of love between them. At the end of the book, Jaylen truly helped himself recover with Lucy's support, and he reciprocated by healing her. This is why I loved him so much. I liked reading about mental health, and the character development was wonderful. This is a book I highly recommend.