A review by wardenred
A Shot in the Dark by Victoria Lee

emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This whole summer stretches out before me, long and full of minefields.

I feel like this is among the least romance-like romance novels I've ever read, even though all the beats are technically there and the leads do have interesting chemistry. But still, their romantic story feels like merely connective tissue for their respective character arcs, and those make the book as a whole really shine.

It took me a while to warm up to Eli and start truly enjoying her chapters. At first, she came off as sort of darkly self-absorbed in a way that I could understand and empathize with given her history, but she was a tad too unlikable to be compelling. It changed during that one scene when she encouraged and supported her roommate while also experiencing and acknowledging her jealousy over the opportunities her roommate was getting. That made for an interesting mix of emotions that instantly made her more relatable to me. I guess that's the key to my heart: the character can get away with anything as long as they do occasional nice things for others, even (or maybe especially) if they don't do it for conventionally/socially acceptably nice reasons, lol. With Wyatt, I was more intrigued from his earliest POV chapter, because he struck me as someone trying hard to be a good, moral person but hiding a fair bit of darkness underneath that facade, and I enjoyed what I saw as the story progressed.

While I didn't feel super invested into the romance, putting most of my focus into the individual arcs instead, I appreciated how the romance made those arcs intersect, each of them mirroring the other in interesting ways. On the surface, Eli and Wyatt had a lot in common as addicts in recovery who had to go no contact with their family. And then there are the aspects of their respective stories that are practically polar opposites in ways that become clearer and clearer as the story progresses. I really liked the build-up to certain reveals about their pasts, and the general theme of reconnecting with your past in order to keep moving toward the future.

There's a lot more to this book that really stuck with me: all the relatable thoughts about making art, vivid New York descriptions, Eli's relationship to her religion and being part of the Jewish community, great trans representation, prose that pulled me in, and so much more. While this wasn't the romance I was looking for when I picked up the book, I did enjoy what I got. Definitely recommending this to anyone looking for complex, flawed characters dealing with the consequences of their worst moments and building themselves and each other up, or for narratives about coming back home and facing all the ways you've changed.
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