Review: A Shot in the Dark by Victoria Lee

Title: A Shot in the Dark

Author: Victoria Lee

Publisher: Dell

Length: 310 Pages

Category: Contemporary Romance, Drama

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: I love that this book reads so deeply personal even though I wasn’t attuned to it in ways I’ve experienced personally. The empathetic bond Victoria Lee builds between her characters and the reader drew me into the story in all the right ways.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Elisheva Cohen has just returned to New York after almost a decade away. The wounds of her past haven’t fully healed, but four years of sobriety and a scholarship to study photography with art legend Wyatt Cole are signs of good things to come, right? They could be, as long as Ely resists self-sabotage. She’s lucky enough to hit it off with a handsome himbo her first night out in the city. But the morning after their mind-blowing hookup, reality comes knocking. When Wyatt Cole walks into the classroom, Ely realizes the man she just spent the night with, the man whose name she couldn’t hear over the loud club music, is her teacher.

Everyone in the art world is obsessed with Wyatt Cole. He’s immensely talented and his notoriously reclusive personal life makes him even more compelling. But behind closed doors, Wyatt’s past is a painful memory. After coming out as transgender, Wyatt was dishonorably discharged from the military and disowned by his family. Since these traumatic experiences, Wyatt has worked hard for his sobriety and his flourishing art career. He can’t risk it all for Ely, no matter how attracted to her he is or how bad he feels about insisting she drop his class in exchange for a strictly professional mentorship. Wyatt can help with her capstone photography project, but he cannot, under any circumstances, fall in love with her in the process.

Through the lens of her camera, Ely must confront the reason she left New York in the first place: the Orthodox community that raised her, then shunned her because of her substance abuse. Along the way, Wyatt’s walls begin to break down, and each artist fights for what’s right in front of them—a person who sees them for all that they are and a love that could mean more than they ever imagined possible.

Review: A note of caution: Victoria Lee’s A Shot in the Dark contains frank discussions and memories of substance abuse, recovery, an overdose resulting in death, and portrays temptation, relapse and self-evaluation with a focus toward forgiveness and moving forward, as well as memories and discussions of physical and verbal abuse, being disowned by family, and the relationship between Ely and her Jewish faith. This is not in any way a light read and should be approached or avoided accordingly.

That said, this is a beautiful book. The intimacy with which Lee approaches the difficult subjects in her story engaged my emotions while also enlightening me on subjects I wasn’t familiar with beforehand. This applies most specifically to Hassidic Judaism and the ways in which Ely shares her faith’s traditional customs and practices with readers through the pain of her past, her observation of her family, her subsequent banishment, and her cautiously reengaging with her spirituality through her communion with it, which is seen through, literally and figuratively, a different lens.

The story follows some familiar romantic tropes in the way Ely and Wyatt meet. The one-night stand, a case of what amounts to mistaken identity leading to the big aha moment when Ely discovers her new professor is none other than the man she slept with the night before, and whose art she feels near-worshipful of. This leads to the student/teacher relationship conflict, though not in an age-gap way. Wyatt is protective of his privacy and reputation, and his attraction to Ely threatens to upset his status quo. There is a slow-burn push and pull that unfolds as both characters grapple with their inner struggles and outward challenges. A Shot in the Dark is a dramatic and intimacy driven novel in both its relationships and the adversity its characters confront.

As spiritually motivated as Ely’s backstory is, Wyatt’s is influenced by his father’s abuse and the subsequent abandonment of his family when he came out as trans. These events are not used to excuse either character’s subsequent substance abuse but to reveal their ongoing pain and the strength and courage it’s taken to live life in pursuit of peace. They each confront their pasts to different results and in realistic ways, but ultimately it leads to their happy ending.

I love that this book reads so deeply personal even though I wasn’t attuned to it in ways I’ve experienced personally. The empathetic bond Victoria Lee builds between her characters and the reader drew me into the story in all the right ways.