"[arc review]
Thank you to the author, Ruby Rana, for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Shap Shot releases August 23, 2023


Snap Shot is the first book in the Ottawa Regents series and features:
- dual pov
- Canadian setting
- South Asian rep
- hockey player x lawyer
- childhood friends turned friends with benefits
- he falls first and hard
- virgin heroine

A compromising photo of Landon with the team’s ex-publicist having sex was posted online and shared to various sites. With this scandal costing the team the Stanley Cup win, and painting Landon as a playboy, they’ve recruited a lawyer to polish up his image and set things straight. But his lawyer, Indi, is not just a regular old lawyer� she also happens to have known Landon when they were kids and both played on the same hockey team in middle school.

I feel so conflicted because there were a few things that I liked, but also many things that I struggled with while reading.

The beginning of the story was a bit rough for me to get through. There were a lot of characters introduced in such a short amount of time, and the characters really came across as immature, even with taking the nature of typical locker room chat into consideration.

This book was long, and a lot of the opening chapters definitely could have cut down on repetition. Quite a few of them would have a scene from one character’s pov and have it progress by days, and then when it alternated to the other pov, it would reverse back by however much time and repeat the entire scene over, which felt like taking three steps forward and two steps back.

For the most part, I liked Landon and Indi, and appreciated how he was able to aid in the development of Indi being able to gain back some confidence that tied back to past bullying and SA. There was a clear set of boundaries that were established, and I commend Indi for not folding and being able to withhold penetration and kissing on the mouth for 80% of the book.
That being said, the transition to get there felt extremely forced. I just don’t buy the fact that they both ended up at the same hotel in Whistler of all places and were over-booked into the same room?!
It’s not like they whimsically took a staycation an hour drive outside of where they live in Ottawa and it would be like running into someone at the same coffee shop� Whistler is a pretty deliberate trip across the country involving a flight and an additional lengthy drive. Maybe I’m thinking too much into it because it’s in the province I live in, but the placement of it in the story came out of nowhere.

Landon� oh boy. He fell, and he fell hard. This man was whipped!
On one hand, he would do cute things like buy Indi a menstrual cup, comfort food, and heating pads, but on the other hand, he gave me red flags that I can’t ignore.
Near the beginning, he downed half of a bottle of whiskey in the early hours of the morning with such ease, and then proceeded to have a fit of rage so strong that he lashed out and smashed a glass cup against his cupboards. And then that scene after their game in Montreal, where he became so possessive and went after another player and locked Indi in his car with a childproof lock. I get that the whole “you’re mine� possessiveness is supposed to come across as endearing, but all I could see was someone becoming aggressive at the blink of an eye, and it was scary.
Is this me projecting past trauma and personal experience? Maybe. But I feel like people with first hand knowledge of individuals that express this type of behaviour would definitely pick up on the things that I am.

Other things that bothered me were just word choices and phrases like:
- “my tent flaps twitch� (didn’t know there was something worse than folds, but I was proved wrong)
- “collecting water in the skin of his nutsack�
- “brain no worky�
- “stuff his gyro meat into your slobber pocket�
- constantly calling his appendage a third leg


At the end of the day, I’m glad they worked through their third-act break up conflict, but at the same time, I was surprised that she wasn’t more upset about his teammates finding out about them because it didn’t seem like it lined up with her characteristics.

The South Asian rep was really good and there were definitely things I was able to learn in terms of culture.

I’m feeling a bit unresolved about Indi’s final career choices and thought her lawyer skills weren’t present enough in the first half.
I also can not wrap my head around the fact that Landon’s parents got divorced when he was a kid, yet decades later they still live with each other even though his father has a boyfriend?? Like, your children are grown married adults with kids of their own. It doesn’t make sense.


edited to add:
In my original review, I made a comment in regard to felching and how it was heavily used in the pre-release tropes. The author then had the audacity to dm me through a separate app to ask if I knew the correct definition of it, which I felt very uncomfortable about.
I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I've since seen proof of them breaking the reader/review space again and that's not cool.
I won't be reading anything further from this author lmao"