Long Shot

Iris DuPree meets August West in a sports bar in her final semester of college, and the pull between them is instant and undeniable. But the timing is impossible: August is on the verge of the NBA draft, and Iris already belongs to basketball's golden boy — August's oldest rival. They part, and their lives split down very different roads: his toward stardom, hers into a relationship that curdles, behind closed doors, into something dangerous.

Over the years their paths keep bending back toward each other. When they finally collide again, August offers Iris a glimpse of the life and love she thought she'd lost — but first she has to find the strength to break free of a controlling, abusive partner and reclaim herself.

The first book in Kennedy Ryan's HOOPS series, Long Shot is an emotionally intense, deeply romantic story of survival and second chances. It deals frankly and graphically with domestic violence and sexual assault, written with unusual care for the reality of leaving an abuser.