Katie the Book Reporter

Not for the first time, the TikTok editors got me – this time it was with Heated Rivalry, the spicy gay hockey romance that’s been everywhere on my FYP in the lead up to the TV adaptation’s release this Friday, Nov. 28.

Based on the book by Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry follows professional hockey players Shane Hollander of Canada and Ilya Rozanov of Russia as they embark on a yearslong affair that blossoms into love. The story opens when the top NHL prospects first meet as teens and it follows them through the next decade as their careers skyrocket and the NHL builds up the rival narrative between them. 

“We were supposed to stand alone at the top, but we will always be there together. We will keep climbing until no one else can reach us, but it will always be together.” 

The book was adapted by Jacob Tierney, known for helming Shoresy and Letterkenny (he plays Glen in the show!), and stars Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov. Heated Rivalry is a Canadian production and is being released through Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the United States.

The chemistry in the show’s trailer goes crazy, but it wasn’t until I saw that HBO Max had picked up U.S. distribution – and I would actually get a chance to watch it beyond TikTok clips – that I knew I had to read the source material to know what everyone was raving about online. 

And boy am I glad that I did! 

I started Heated Rivalry last Friday and wrapped the final pages of the couple’s sequel, The Long Game, first thing Monday morning. I can’t remember the last time I blazed through a non-audiobook read (let alone two!) so quickly. I was giggling and kicking my feet from the first pages of Heated Rivalry and I was absolutely consumed by Ilya and Shane’s love story until the last pages of The Long Game. They had me laughing out loud, swooning, tearing up and gasping in dismay throughout their fun, tender and sexy romance. 

First published in 2019, Heated Rivalry is the second entry in Rachel Reid’s larger gay hockey romance series, Game Changers. One thing that stands out about Shane and Ilya’s partnership in the series? They’re the only couple where both love interests are professional hockey players, which forms the crux of the conflict in their relationship. 

“Having an NHL player come out as gay for the first time was exciting, but a player on every team in the league could come out and it still wouldn’t help Shane’s situation. Being gay – or whatever – was not really the thing that would create a scandal. Fucking your biggest rival over the course of your entire NHL career was something that no one would understand. Not one person.” 

On the surface Shane and Ilya are very much an opposites attract relationship. Shane is the golden boy type: wholesome, polished and disciplined, while Ilya is a playboy who collects exotic sports cars and is known for his blunt, cocky attitude. 

Digging deeper the men grapple with their own challenges. 

Shane struggles to accept his sexuality and square it with what he thinks a perfect professional hockey player should be, a pursuit already complicated by the fact Shane is biracial (half Japanese) in a predominantly White sport. Ilya wrestles with the emotional scars of a difficult home life, including a domineering father and a mother lost to depression, and constant demands from home – for money from his family and greatness from Russia broadly. 

Both fear that embracing their relationship and having it come to light could destroy their careers; Ilya, who is a closeted bisexual, additionally fears if he embraces Shane and his career falls apart that he could be sent back to Russia, where his sexuality could endanger him. 

“He wanted the weight of his family, and his country, lifted. He wanted to be himself.” 

To a degree, each also envies the other. Shane is awed by Ilya’s boldness and his generally no-fucks-given attitude, while Ilya yearns for the familial embrace and encouragement Shane receives from his parents, Yuna and David, who consistently appear at their son’s games and passionately support him. Ilya is also self-conscious about his Russian accent and mastery of English, and jealous of Shane’s fluency in both English and French.

The story has a pretty narrow scope, relying heavily on the chemistry and tension between the two leads.

While there are a few tiers of supporting characters in Heated Rivalry, the bulk of the story focuses exclusively on Shane and Ilya and their interactions across a decade. The two men, who play for Montreal and Boston, respectively, secretly hook up whenever they’re in the same city, either playing against one another or at NHL events like the NHL Awards and All-Star Game. 

Over the years they meet in hotel rooms, Ilya’s penthouse and a secret sex apartment in Montreal, until eventually their relationship blossoms to cover the moments in between their meetings during the hockey season, with text messages, phone calls and, eventually, a getaway to Shane’s lakeside cottage in the summer. 

Because of the set-up of their arrangement, the book includes a lot of sex scenes – including one in the prologue. 

Too much sex in books has been a past complaint of mine, but I think it works here. Why? It makes sense for the plot’s concept, it drives Shane and Ilya’s relationship forward and reveals things about their individual characters and their evolving relationship to one another. The sex isn’t just sex; it allows us to see the growing emotional connection and vulnerability between them.

“He realized, when he was back in his room, that they hadn’t even kissed. He also realized, with horror, that he regretted that.”

From their first interaction it was clear Shane and Ilya would end up together, even if it took them time to embrace it. In chapter two, Shane describes their careers as “inescapably linked,” a description I thought was fitting for their entire relationship. Looking beyond their surface-level differences, Shane and Ilya are both competitive and passionate and their relationship is grounded in mutual respect, pride and care for one another. They just fit. 

“The stupid part of Shane wanted to fight for Ilya. For them. The sensible part — the part that was in control of most things in Shane’s life — knew there couldn’t possibly be a future with Ilya. There couldn’t be a present with Ilya. They needed to end things quickly, and cleanly, and never look back. The other path led to nothing but heartache and scandal and misery and … soft Russian words being breathed against Shane’s skin. It led to falling asleep with strong arms wrapped around him, and waking up to a lazy, crooked smile and playful kisses. It led to homemade tuna melts and the precious times when Ilya would offer Shane the tiny pieces of himself that he usually kept so carefully guarded.”

“He wanted to tell Shane that the closest he felt to home was when he was with him. It didn’t matter if it was in a hotel room, or Ilya’s apartment, or at that weird hideout building Shane bought in Montreal, or here at Shane’s cottage; he was himself when he was with Shane. He’d left Russia, he was uneasy in America, and he’d spent his entire adult life drifting between continents and between lovers. But not he had been reeled in by this annoying Canadian, and all that he knew was that he wanted to stay. He wanted to anchor himself to Shane and just…stay.”

Reid revisits Shane and Ilya’s story in the sixth and final book of the Game Changers series, The Long Game, which picks up roughly two years after the end of Heated Rivalry. Shane and Ilya are in a committed but largely secret relationship, with Ilya moving to Ottawa and the Ottawa Centaurs to be closer to Shane in Montreal. Everything isn’t domestic bliss though, with Ilya struggling with depression and Shane needing to find the courage to embrace their relationship publicly.  I’ll share more of my thoughts on their sequel in a separate post.

Fingers crossed season one performs well so we can see The Long Game adapted for the screen, too! 

I do think this is a TV show where the viewing experience will be enhanced by reading the source material, either before you start the show or as the episodes are rolled out. Early reactions I’ve seen from fans online suggest it’s a very faithful adaptation. I read a review from The Hollywood Reporter and in context it seemed the author hadn’t read the series, which may have helped add context for choices about story pacing, time jumps (there are multiple in the book) and the lack of will-they-won’t-they sexual tension between our two main characters – they will, and they do. The core relationship question between Shane and Ilya isn’t whether they’ll act on their desire, but whether they’ll let themselves have and enjoy something more than a physical connection despite the possible risks.

Some of my other favorite moments from Heated Rivalry: 

“Shane had been sick with jealousy, but had also been undeniably proud when he’d watched Ilya Rozanov lift the cup over his head and roar. There had been tears streaming down Rozanov’s face as he’d hollered and hollered, and Shane had seen that this was more than the pride of being the best player on the best team in the NHL that year. Rozanov had proved something to somebody. Shane had been shocked to find tears in his own eyes as he’d watched the raw emotion explode out of Rozanov. It was as if, with every heave of the cup over his head, Rozanov was saying, ‘Fuck you, fuck you. I did it. Fuck you,’ to someone. Maybe to Shane. But he didn’t think so. He hoped not.”

“Shane and Ilya were opposites in almost every way imaginable, but it was getting harder for Ilya to deny that there was something in his core that was drawn to Hollander. Instead of getting him out of his system with their hookups, each one just made him want more. It was dangerous fucking stuff.”

“‘Why do I need this so much?’ Shane muttered the words against Rozanov’s lips, and hoped the other man hadn’t heard them.”

“Shane. He called me Shane. He pulled back so he could see Rozanov’s face, and was shocked to see him staring at him with the same wide-eyed terror that Shane felt. ‘Ilya,’ he said, barely more than a whisper. Ilya didn’t answer. Instead, he crushed their mouths together and kissed Shane in a raw, uncontrolled way that felt like an apology. Oh no. Oh fuck. Oh no. When they broke apart, Ilya rested his forehead against Shane’s and they just breathed together. Shane held Ilya’s face in his hands, and Ilya was stroking his back. Was Shane supposed to say something? Nothing had actually been admitted here. No grand declarations. No questions asked.” 

“Ilya shook his head. ‘When will I have you for as long as I want?’”

“It was exactly how Ilya had secretly always wanted to kiss Shane: a shameless display of adoration and care.”