Taking A Shot
Portland Storm #2.5 • Book 2
by Catherine Gayle
Why You'll Love This
A hockey player asking a cancer-stricken teenager to prom sounds sentimental — but Gayle makes it ache in all the right ways.
- Great if you want: sports romance with genuine emotional stakes beyond the game
- The experience: tender and bittersweet — reads fast but lingers after
- The writing: Gayle balances sweetness and grief without tipping into melodrama
- Skip if: illness storylines hit too close to home for comfortable reading
About This Book
When a rising hockey player sets his sights on his teammate's teenage daughter—a girl quietly fighting leukemia while trying to hold onto what's left of a normal senior year—the stakes couldn't feel more personal or more tender. Taking A Shot isn't a story about grand gestures or easy happily-ever-afters. It's about two people navigating courage in completely different arenas: one on the ice, one in a hospital waiting room. The emotional weight here is real, and Catherine Gayle doesn't let readers off the hook by softening the harder truths about illness, hope, or what it means to act before time runs out.
Gayle writes with warmth and restraint in equal measure—she earns the big emotional moments rather than manufacturing them. As a novella-length entry in the Portland Storm series, the story moves efficiently without feeling compressed, striking a balance between romance and genuine heartache that longer books sometimes struggle to find. Readers who want a story that leaves them feeling something without wading through hundreds of pages will find this one satisfying in ways that linger well after the last page.
