Book Review: Shoot Your Shot by Lexi LaFleur Brown

Official Synopsis: When Jaylen Jones doesn’t secure an NHL contract at the end of training camp, he worries his hockey career is over. But after an anonymous one-night stand on his last night in town, his luck turns around and a last-minute roster spot opens up on the Seattle Rainiers. Connecting his fortune to the girl he spent the night with, superstitious Jaylen is suddenly desperate to keep her around.

Aspiring tattoo artist Lucy isn’t so sure about the proposition to remain Jaylen’s lucky charm—she’s been called a lot of things in her life, but good luck has never been one of them. But stuck in a career slump, Lucy has everything to gain. Hoping for an apprenticeship at a tattoo parlor hasn’t offered her much stability, and Jaylen is willing to pay any price to get Lucy to agree…so maybe sending him a routine text message before each game won’t be too hard.

What starts as an agreement to trade favors—a good luck text for an appearance at a charity event, or well wishes in exchange for prime game tickets—quickly turns into sizzling chemistry that’s too delicious not to give in to. But Lucy’s been in too many situationships to even think about getting attached again, and Jaylen is clearly only with Lucy as long as it’s helping his career…neither of them expecting getting lucky could be so complicated.

One of the first things I enjoyed and found really fun to learn after reading, is that Lexi is married to a hockey player, which I think gives her a pretty decent insight 'behind the curtain' that a lot of other hockey romances don't have. She would know how to get behind the scenes, see players after the games, or understanding the life of a hockey wife. Because of that, there were parts of the book that I later realized made a lot of sense. That being said, I do think you can see the influence of her and her husband's relationship within the book, at least in some ways. I obviously don't know their whole love story, but you can tell this story was written by someone closer to the whole thing.

I found Lucy to be a unique FMC of a hockey romance, she is queer, kind of a mess and working on achieving her current dream, being a tattoo artist. Lucy is a fantastic artist, and ends up painting murals for the stadium where JJ has now been signed as a player. This is after having one night together, and JJ leaving without saying goodbye. With JJ convinced that Lucy is his good luck charm, he is motivated to woo her into staying around, or at least start with good luck texts before games. This is the start of their relationship, which seems to fall quickly into depending on each other in both a good and bad way at times.

One way JJ benefits, besides being better at hockey, is having Lucy talk to him about panic attacks and maybe needing help with anxiety. I love when mental health is brought up, especially in a place like hockey or sports, because I don't think its talked about enough at times. JJ holds onto a lot of old feelings and guilt, and watching him work through that was one of my favorite parts of the book.

My 'meh' moments came in with having a lot of the beats be the same as other sports romance, which is fine but I'm always looking for a 'wow'. Overall, I think Lucy and JJ make sense together, especially as the book goes on. Lucy's friends are some of my favorite side characters, and I liked that there was almost more focus on them instead of the hockey team as a whole.

The writing for the book wasn't bad, but there weren't many moments that really stuck out. I would be interested and excited to see if the writing gets better with the more books she writes, especially if she can keep up with hockey romance with her 'inner' knowledge. This is her debut novel and after having a scroll through her social media, it does look like she is a big book fan as well as spending a lot of time around hockey.

I rated the book 3 out of 5 stars.

Shoot Your Shot was published March 11, 2025.