Review: Taking Shots by Toni Aleo

I love this cover!

No matter how hard she tries, Eleanor Fisher never thinks she’s good enough, from her job to her weight to her love life. After enduring years of abuse at the hands of an ex-boyfriend, Elli has been drifting through life in a daze. Until, that is, she meets Shea Adler on a promotional shoot for the NHL’s Nashville Assassins. Before Elli knows what’s happening, the gorgeous Shea breaks the ice and shatters her world.

A brilliant athlete inside the rink, Shea Adler is tired of the life he’s living outside of it: the women, the money, the drinking. But everything changes when he meets Elli. After laying eyes on this feisty, witty, beautiful woman, he feels like he’s just taken the hardest hit of his life. No matter how skeptical she is, Shea knows they are meant to be together—if only he can convince Elli to put her insecurities aside before she misses out on a shot at love.

Eleanor Fisher is a well known photographer in the Nashville area. She’s taking team pictures for the Nashville Assassins when Shea Adler sees her for the first time. He’s almost smitten from the first and can’t stop thinking about the woman. He goes so far as to have his sister, who is a party planner and planning a party for the team, call her up and book her as a photographer for his party. From there he asks her out constantly and can’t get enough of being with her.

Elli is a huge fan of the Assassins and of number 6 – Shea Adler – in particular. She just about dies when he asks her out and even though they start dating on a regular basis she still can’t believe that he’s interested in her. She has serious insecurity issues that were brought on by her evil family and ex-fiance and those are so stuck in her head she can’t seem to like herself much less believe that anyone else might.

The pair continue seeing each other but when something happens that makes Elli believe that Shea isn’t true to her she flips and breaks off their relationship making both parties miserable.

I found this book in a kind of roundabout way. I was sent info on book 4 in the series and that intrigued me enough to look back at the series thinking that I wanted to start with book 1. This was a good book but I definitely had a few issues with it.

The story in general is a good one. I really liked the whole premise with the hockey team, the romance and even the big mis. Although I have my own insecurities (as I think we all do) I thought that Elli’s were drawn out a little too much. She basically had had the world at her feet at one time. She was a size 2, an up and coming Broadway star but then she started gaining weight because of hypothyroidism. She lost her job, her fiancé was more than verbally cruel and her mother and sister were horrible to her about her weight. She had at one point gotten pretty big but had lost weight and from what I could tell she was now a size 10 or 12 so not that big at all – she was just incredibly self-conscious. She loved being a photographer now but besides being proud of her pictures she wasn’t proud of anything else she was and that got a little old for me.

Shea loved her exactly how she was and when she showed him pictures of her at size 2 he didn’t like them because she was too skin and bones. Shea was wonderful! He was thoughtful and kind; loving and loyal and went out of his way to constantly tell her how beautiful she was – at first not even knowing about her issues. Their romance was sweet, however, and I really loved getting to know them as a couple.

The book itself, imho, needed to be shorter. At times I thought we were almost getting too much information as every little detail was shared and we got to see them on every date, etc. There were a couple of times when time jumped forward but a bit of it was repetitive and I think those parts could have been pared down because it made the book a slower read. It didn’t drag exactly but pretty close at times. That being said it was a fun story overall though it does have its share of angst. I’m looking forward to the next book to see what it has to offer.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Toni Aleo

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