The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid
Published 2025 · 92,400 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Romance, LGBTQ+ Fiction
How hard is The Shots You Take to read?
The Shots You Take scores 22 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 24 out of 100
- Contemporary romance written in plain, conversational English. Reviews describe a character-driven read with gentle humour, so the vocabulary stays close to Beach Read and It Ends with Us.
- Sentence structure: 26 out of 100
- Genre romance of about 92,000 words uses straightforward contemporary sentence structure. Nothing in the evidence points to experiments with syntax, in line with Beach Read.
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- The book follows two ex-teammates through grief and a rekindled relationship in a small town. Its subject is personal emotion and concrete events, like the direct experience of It Ends with Us.
- Information density: 24 out of 100
- A slow-burn, character-driven romance moves at a comfortable pace with one central relationship. It is closer to Beach Read's light density than to anything encyclopedic.
- Narrative indirection: 28 out of 100
- Reviewers call it introspective and emotional, with the focus on two men's feelings. Genre romance states emotion openly, so readers infer little, much as in Beach Read.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The evidence shows a realistic romance with hockey and small-town settings and no allegorical layer. Symbolism is minimal, as in Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Reid's humour is gentle and the emotional engagement is sincere. The tone sits near the direct emotional engagement of It Ends with Us.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- Second-chance romance sets up a reunion, and the genre promises an emotionally satisfying ending. It resolves like Beach Read's genre-expected happy ending.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- A standalone contemporary romance with two leads reconnecting in one town most likely follows a linear arc, like Beach Read. Nothing suggests formal experiment.
How The Shots You Take is regarded
The Shots You Take holds a literary regard score of 23 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where the story of The Shots You Take takes place
- North America, 2020s (2025), the main setting