Do you ever have a reading experience with a book that constantly makes you think, "Hmm, I should DNF this," but then for whatever inexplicable reason, you keep going, and by the end you find yourself saying, "Yep, I should have DNFed that"? Because that's what happened to me here.

There are a lot of good topics here such as racism, colorism, life as a biracial individual and the unique struggles therein, family, grief, the impact of Hurricane Katrina, abuse, and more, but for me, a lot of that was overshadowed by how vehemently I hated August as a character and how intense the abuse and rape descriptions were.

August is sexist, overly possessive, jealous, and a spoiled brat. He uses women left and right to try to "get over" this woman he's met for all of an hour and decided he wants to spend the rest of his life with, and some of his comments about Iris are disgusting. It felt to me like, until maybe the 70% mark or later, he never could focus on anything he liked about Iris but her body. His dialogue made me cringe a dozen times and I couldn't get away from him fast enough.

The abuse in this book is some of the most graphic I've ever read, and it rarely lets up. Even when you think Iris is safe, bam!, another assault scene, right up to the ending. I'm not accusing the abuse rep of being exploitative here, and I won't dictate what any author's limits should be — I'll only say that this book should have come with MUCH stronger trigger warnings and I strongly wish that the rape scenes had been less descriptive.

I was incredibly excited to read anything at all by Kennedy Ryan after hearing so many friends and beloved authors rave about this series and Kennedy's other books, but with the way I feel about Long Shot right now, it'll be a minute before I reach for anything else by this author.