Content note:
Spoiler: Show
Dear Rachel Reid,
Riley Tuck and Adam Sheppard used to play hockey together for the Toronto Northmen. They were rookie defensemen together in the early 2000s and shared an apartment. They hit it off straight away and soon became best friends. Riley fell in love with Adam, believing Adam was straight and that was that. But then one night when they were both drunk, Adam kissed Riley and from then on, they hooked up from time to time – usually when alcohol was involved. Riley fell even harder for Adam but Adam pulled away after every interaction, not addressing the issue of his sexuality at all. In fact, each time he and Riley hooked up, Adam would almost immediately go out and find a woman to have sex with as if to prove to both of them that what Adam and Riley did was just for fun and didn’t mean anything. It was… situational rather than sexual. For Adam. At least, that’s what he said.
Riley eventually blurts out that he’s in love with Adam and in typical Adam fashion, he can’t handle it, laughs it off and then hooks up with Maggie – who falls pregnant and next thing you know, Adam and Maggie are married.
Riley and Adam stay friends – best friends – all through this, despite that Riley is dying inside but eventually it becomes too much and things come to a head after they’re team wins the Stanley Cup and what happens in the aftermath. As a result, Riley requests a trade from Toronto to Dallas and cuts Adam out of his life. Riley wasn’t very successful in Dallas – mental health and alcohol issues eventually led to him retiring back to his home town of Avery River in Nova Scotia, to help his dad run the local sporting goods store.
Now it’s April 2024 and Riley’s beloved father Harvey Tuck has died suddenly of a heart attack and Riley is distraught. At the funeral, Adam turns up. They haven’t seen each other in over a decade and Riley has a lot of resentment and anger, as well as unresolved romantic feelings for Adam and it’s all just too much.
Adam, for his part, retired from hockey a little while earlier and is now divorced from Maggie, having come out as gay to her. He’s the father of two teenage children but he’s not close with them. He spent a lot of time away from them in their formative years and now that he has time to spend with them, they want to be with their friends or have their noses buried in their phones. He and Maggie had an amicable split (she’s dating someone else now) and remain very good friends. After Maggie sees the obituary on Facebook, she urges Adam to go to Avery River to be there for Riley and to maybe put some of those old ghosts to rest. Who knows? Maybe there’s something that can be salvaged between them. Maybe something more than a restoration of their friendship.
Of course Adam was always in love with Riley but he wasn’t open with himself about his own sexuality. It took him a very long time to realise he’s gay. And, when they were playing together, it would have been much more difficult to come out, had he even realised. Riley always knew he was gay but he wasn’t out in the NHL.
But now – well, things could be different now. If only the pair can work through the hurt and pain from all those years ago and find a path forward together.
Initially, Riley doesn’t want Adam in Avery River. He’s already struggling with the loss of his father only five days earlier, he’s worried about his mother and sister and also worried he won’t be able to fill the role in the town that Harvey Tuck filled – junior hockey coach and just general all-around do-whatever-you-need-with-a-smile kind of guy. Riley has depression which was mostly controlled until the death of his father and was also diagnosed with Emotional Dysregulation Disorder. What he doesn’t need is more emotional upheaval in his life. He tells Adam to go.
Adam, respectful but determined, leaves Riley’s space but does not leave town. He keeps coming back, being helpful and present and offering apologies for his past behaviour. I thought the balance between Adam sticking around and Adam being sensitive to Riley’s stated wishes was pretty well done here. I didn’t feel like Adam was stepping outside of Riley’s boundaries.
Over the course of a few days, Riley starts to soften towards Adam and ultimately invites him to bring his bung shoulder to stay in the guest room rather than the lumpy mattress of the town’s only motel.
Riley has built a full life for himself in Avery River. He has a house on the beach which he’s renovated and decorated with antiques. He has a greenhouse and has become a keen gardener. He has a beloved rescue dog, Lucky (“he’s lucky he’s a dog”) who goes with him most everywhere. He has good friends in the community and, from time to time he goes into Halifax to hook up with guys on the apps. He’s not really prepared for Adam to come storming back into his life. He stunned to find that not only is Adam divorced and single – he’s actually come out as gay. It’s not super public yet but Adam isn’t hiding it either.
Relationships can be very messy and it can be surprising what couples can work their way back from. Some things in the past one might think are deal breakers eventually aren’t deal breakers at all, as it turns out. I didn’t have any problem with believing that Riley and Adam could work their way to a HEA.
Adam and Riley were good friends back in the day. They have a messy history but a lot of really good memories too. In the end, those memories are worth more than the pain and both men move on from the past. Still Riley is a little hesitant to go all in straight away. He doesn’t think he could survive it if Adam broke his heart again.
The opening scene in the book is Harvey Tuck’s funeral. The book opens in grief and, given that Riley’s father died only 5 days before the funeral, that first week the men are together again is cloaked in that grief. The story is told using flashbacks to vignettes of their time together as young rookies, leading up to their Stanley Cup win some 9 years later. Most of the flashbacks are, to say the least, bittersweet. The Shots You Take is not a light-hearted book. There is a heaviness to the tone which is fitting for the setting. It’s a quieter book too, set mostly in small town Nova Scotia and outside of professional hockey for the most part.
That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom – that’s not the case at all. There are certainly lighter moments and of course there is a HEA. But it is in no way a “feel good rom com” type book.
Rachel Reid’s writing is easy to read and connect with and I liked the way she was able to inject small moments of humour within the narrative
Lucky licked his own nose, his tail thudding against the floor in the laid-back manner of someone whose concerns were mostly ham related.
to lighten the mood somewhat. I liked her apt and unique word pictures too.
– Adam said, the words tumbling out of him now like the world’s most useless fountain –
Adam talks about loving his kids and wanting to be closer to them, wanting to stay in Toronto until they’re at least off to college. There’s not a lot of his kids actually in the story and what there was didn’t endear me to them all that much. They were, to say the least, disengaged, and seemed pretty disinterested in their dad. Adam said he tried to be a good father albeit he was largely absent but I didn’t quite understand why the kids were so dismissive of him. I would have liked to have seen improvement in their relationship on the page. I did not. I would also have liked to have seen Riley interacting with them but that wasn’t in the book either.
There were a lot of things that Adam and Riley had to work through in terms of logistics once they decided to be together. I was interested in those logistics but they were mostly told via the epilogue set 5 years later.
I liked The Shots You Take. It was easy to read, engaging and entertaining, for all that it was somewhat shrouded in sad. But it was not quite as good for me as other Reid books I’ve read, most especially, Time To Shine and The Long Game/Heated Rivalry. Time To Shine includes the death of a family member too but felt lighter overall. All the books I’ve mentioned have mental health representation in one form or another – in each case I think the representation is well done.
I did like how Adam took almost childish delight in seeing a deer or a meteor shower and I liked how they balanced each other out when they were together. There was a lot to like but the ending was a little rushed for me.
Grade: B
Regards,
Kaetrin
kebo88 | kebo88 | kebo88 | slot gacor | slot gacor | slot gacor | kebo88 | slot gacor | kebo88 | slot gacor
