Taking A Shot will move you to tears, make you glad to be alive, and give you hope that there are more special people in the world like Jamie “Babs” Babcock because the world can use a lot more men like him. ~ Slick, Guilty Pleasures
Description:
Katie Weber has lost her health due to leukemia, and now her chemotherapy treatments have taken her hair. She’s not about to show up to her senior prom bald and let her classmates steal her dignity, too. Prom is no place for a girl who looks more like an alien than a high school student, especially when her so-called friends all dropped her like she had the plague at the first mention of the word cancer. Katie could never get up the courage to ask Jamie—her crush for almost two years, ever since he joined her dad’s pro hockey team—to take her. Not with the way she looks now. Besides, her dad would absolutely murder him.
Jamie Babcock knows its bad news to fall for his Portland Storm teammate’s daughter, but he’s had a thing for Katie since the first time he met her when he was just a wide-eyed, eighteen-year-old rookie. Now cancer might take her away before he ever grows the balls to do anything about it, though. Her father won’t be happy about it, but Jamie has to take a shot and ask to take her to her prom. It seems like Katie has just about given up, and he can’t let her go without giving her some good memories…something to hold on to. She’s still got her whole life ahead of her—she just has to keep living it. If he can convince her of that, nothing her father might do to him will matter.
First off let me say this is a novella and although it is short it packs such a wallop that I cried 
buckets throughout it. This ends with a happy for now ending but it ends with so much hope for the future that it was perfect for this story. Katie Babcock whose father plays for the Portland Storm is battling leukemia. The diagnosis has taken a lot out of her family and especially Katie as she endures radiation and now chemotherapy treatments. Katie isn’t in a real good place so when Jamie “Babs” Babcock, one of the Storm players and the guy she’s had a huge crush on, asks to take her to her prom she wants it more than anything despite her dad having issues with her going. Jamie is only a few years older than Katie having been drafted into the NHL at 18 and his playing ability moved him up the ranks quickly. The minute Jamie laid eyes on Katie, he was a goner but out of respect for her father he’s held his distance.
The majority of this novella takes place at Katie’s prom and the reader is treated to some of the most beautiful and poignant scenes to ever grace a romance novel. Katie and Jamie feel so much for one another but they are young so this book isn’t about sex; it’s about falling in love, it’s about acceptance, it’s about believing, it’s about fighting, and it’s about hope. I am a blubbering mess as I write this review because this book is just so spectacular and makes me again marvel at the superb storytelling of author Catherine Gayle. While you can read this book as a standalone, I think you’ll enjoy it more if you’ve read the first two books in this series however this is a book that everyone needs to read. Taking A Shot will move you to tears, make you glad to be alive, and give you hope that there are more special people in the world like Jamie “Babs” Babcock because the world can use a lot more men like him.
Thanks Slick
I’m loving the cover. Thanks for the info on the book.