Rating: 5 stars
Buy Links:  Amazon | All Romance
Length: Novel

Worth a Shot is the second book in Kim Dare’s FIT Guys Story series.  While it can be read as a stand alone, I really recommend reading the first in the series, Worth Waiting For, because it gives you a window into Tony Landon’s past and personality.

Before I recap this story I must say that every once in a while a character really resonates with me, hits all the right buttons and worms his way into my heart—Tony did this for me.  I found him to be so delightful—naughty yet endearing, strong yet so vulnerable.  All in all, I feel he was incredibly well crafted and just lovely to be reacquainted with from the first novel.

The story is rich and tender.  Donovan is in the same athletics program as Tony, only his concentration is in archery not track.  He is intensely shy due to a past experience that has left him deeply scarred and fearful of having any type of relationship ever again.  Tony has literally been crushing on Donovan for months and has bided his time in the hopes of bringing the gorgeous archer out of his shell.  As the two gravitate toward one another, author Kim Dare allows Donovan’s back-story to leak out bit by bit via the chronicling of his inner thoughts.  Each time he is faced with making a choice, Donovan must remind himself that the past it just that—gone—and that Tony will not hurt him as others have.

Tony fights against his own dominant tendencies and slowly draws Donovan out, teaching him that sex can be a pleasant thing, a mutually satisfying activity.  All this is so new to Donovan, and he runs scared so often, but each time Tony draws him back and cares for him with a tenderness that often left me breathless.  The plot of this novel was actually quite simple and it was the developing love story and the healing that took place during it that really fueled most of this story.  Worth a Shot was an in depth character study of a Dom recognizing what it is to truly care for his submissive and a submissive coming to terms with the idea that wanting to give up control does not make him some worthless thing to be used and discarded, or worse, controlled to the point of emotional enslavement.

This second installment in Kim Dare’s new series was as delightful as the first.  I find this author to just excel at creating characters with real depth and am so delighted that she can give us both short stories and longer novels such as this that can grab at our heart strings and delight us with a beautiful love story.  I highly recommend Worth a Shot to you.