Heated Rivalry/The Long Game by Rachel Reid

May 06, 2022

So I've been hearing about this hockey romance series, Game Changers, by Rachel Reid for ages. And this spring Reid came out with a follow-up to one of the books and it's been getting a lot of buzz so I thought I would take this opportunity to finally give it a try. And I honestly think that these two books are two of my new faves of all time!

The main characters, Shane and Ilya, are two of the sweetest, funniest, most entertaining and well written characters I've had the pleasure to read in a long time. I adore them!

Heated Rivalry and The Long Game are very different books, however. The differences were interesting and worked perfectly. The first book was about how Shane and Ilya became "Shane and Ilya". You get to see their relationship develop and evolve. It is a VERY SPICY book. Loads of sex scenes but because they are essentially used here as a constantly traveling professional athlete's version of dating, they are never gratuitous. Each one shows us something new about Shane and Ilya, the ways they connect, their feelings for one another, and how those feelings change over time. It's really well done. And incredibly funny!

With the second book, there was a completely different structure and a different tone. But the same banter and humor we loved in HR is still there. Only there’s a lot more angst to go with it. Much more serious tone than with HR. Several serious topics addressed. And this is definitely more Ilya’s story than Shane’s, and I am here for it! I loved getting to know him better.

It’s interesting seeing where Shane & Ilya are at after Heated Rivalry. We start to see some cracks appear in their relationship. They are struggling with keeping the fact of their relationship under wraps. The effort is wearing on them and they’re tired of hiding. And Shane and Ilya deal with it in very different ways.

The book uses this storyline as a way to look at the dark side of professional hockey. It’s not historically been very queer-friendly (among other things) and it’s time for that to change. I appreciated the well-deserved criticism the story has for the NHL as an organization (both the real and fictional). In addition to Shane and Ilya having to consider the potential ramifications of coming out, there were a couple of characters, fellow players, who were basically personifying the Evander Kane situation, and by extension, the Kyle Beach story. If you don’t know about either of those, I recommend a quick google. Anyway, this fictional version of the NHL didn’t handle those situations any better than the real NHL has and the book had some things to say about that. The league commissioner in the book was a rather one dimensional villain but it got the point across, which is that the state of the real life organization needs an overhaul and people need to be held accountable. I really liked what Rachel Reid did here with those subplots.

I thought this was a very well done second part to Shane & Ilya’s story. I loved seeing Ilya deal with some long-standing emotional issues and Shane realize where his priorities lay and find a more appropriate work-life balance. These characters are so special so it’s great to see them get a more deeply established HEA. It was heart warming, hilarious, and had a high squee factor. ALL the stars!!

To this series I say Я всегда вуду тебя любить.