The Shots You Take
59 pages • 1-hour read
Rachel ReidThe Shots You Take
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing and antigay bias.
Genre Context: Contemporary Romance
Rachel Reid’s The Shots You Take is a contemporary romance novel. Typical romance novels follow a central couple’s love affair, exploring how circumstantial, personal, or social conflicts might complicate the primary characters’ journey toward a happy ending. Romance novels are known for their use of tropes to create narrative tension and obstacles to the characters’ relationship. Popular genre tropes include the friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, best-friend's-brother, opposites-attract, or forced-proximity tropes. These familiar narrative scenarios offer romance readers a predictable narrative scaffolding to navigate otherwise unpredictable romantic dynamics.
The Shots You Take falls under the subgenres of sports romance, hockey romance, and queer romance, and leans primarily on the second-chance romance trope. These subgenres have seen significant growth within the larger romance market, which, according to Nielsen BookData, was the top-selling adult fiction genre in the first half of 2023. According to Nielsen’s 2025 data on publishing trends, “Genre fiction continues to dominate the charts—particularly crime novels, science fiction, fantasy, and romance boosted by BookTok—and remains the main driver of growth” (Mukha, Olha. “Nielsen BookData: 2025's bestsellers are the Bible and trivia books.” Chytoma, 13 Mar. 2026).
Reid’s novel uses the established conventions of the romance genre to explore themes of regret and reconciliation. Central to the plot is the second-chance trope, where lovers separated by time and distance have the chance to rekindle their old love affair. In The Shots You Take, former lovers Adam and Riley reunite after “twelve fucking years” (5), forcing them to confront their shared history. The narrative heightens the stakes of their rekindled relationship by setting it against the backdrop of the National Hockey League (NHL), a hypermasculine environment that amplifies the characters’ fears of exposure. These elements of their history satisfy the forbidden/secret romance trope, too, as Riley and Adam feel compelled to hide their relationship due to their vocational context and Adam’s reluctance to come out. The characters are also close friends—they play hockey together and room together—satisfying the friends-to-lovers trope, too. Even when Adam resurfaces in Riley’s life in 2024, the two renew their relationship as friends first, gradually easing back into deeper forms of emotional and sexual intimacy. By using these established genre conventions, the novel creates a familiar yet emotionally resonant framework for readers, grounding its exploration of love and identity in the specific high-stakes world of professional hockey.
Social Context: The National Hockey League (NHL)
The central conflict in The Shots You Take is shaped by the real-world climate for LGBTQ+ athletes in professional men’s sports, specifically the National Hockey League (NHL). The narrative spans a period of significant social change, offering a hopeful view of the league’s slow efforts to honor inclusivity and acceptance. After the 2019 publication and 2025 HBO adaptation of Reid’s 2019 queer hockey romance Heated Rivalry, interest in the NHL at large and in the league’s LGBTQIA+ inclusivity efforts grew:
But hockey, like most pro sports, does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to LGBTQ+ acceptance. There are no openly gay NHL players—an outlier within pro sports, according to OutSports. In June 2023, the NHL banned players from wearing specialty-themed jerseys, such as Pride sweaters and tape; it later reversed the decision on tape after Arizona Coyotes defenseman Travis Dermott flouted the ban. (Krishnan, Manisha. “Heated Rivalry Is Bringing New Fans to Hockey. Does the Sport Deserve Them?” Wired, 11 Feb. 2026)
This institutional closet acts as the backdrop for Adam and Riley’s story, particularly in the early days of their sexual affair. Adam’s internal struggle particularly reflects this historical context, where coming out could mean the end of a career and social ostracization from teammates he describes as not being “progressive thinkers.” The NHL’s institutional hostility contrasts with Avery River’s communal acceptance to highlight the immense personal courage required for LGBTQ+ athletes to live openly.
At the same time, Reid’s novel offers a world where the league’s gestures at inclusivity are upheld, and where queer athletes in the present day might find more acceptance. Reid’s fictional universal speaks to some recent social developments in the league. For example, the NHL has “partnerships with Pride organizations around the US, Canada, and Australia, as well as pro-inclusivity organization You Can Play, which it's been working with since 2013. The league said it will be hosting its third annual Pride Cup in 2026” (Krishnan). In The Shots You Take, Reid imagines an athletic sphere where LGBTQIA+ people are safe, accepted, and supported because of these efforts.
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