Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid Book Club + Discussion

Nothing interferes with pro hockey star Shane Hollander's game.

Now that he's captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won't let anything jeopardize that--definitely not the sexy rival he loves to hate.

Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane's not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he's as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him--except Shane. Publicly, they're enemies. Privately, they can't stop touching each other.

The smart thing to do? Walk away, once a few secret hookups turn into a struggle to keep their relationship out of the press. The truth could ruin them both. But for Shane and Ilya, secrecy is soon no longer an option...

Why I Picked It Up

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I love being in on what other people are talking about. As an author too, I also feel it’s crucial to my job to read and know about what’s getting an audience excited to read anything. With dropping literacy rates, which are the books reaching the people who don’t consider themselves readers? Between Beartown and the Vancouver Storm series, I’ve also been on a hockey kick this year across genres.

In this analysis, I'm sort of also talking about Game Changer, the first book, because certain plot actions hinge on what happens with Scott and Kip throughout (and they're bundled together in the show's chronology.) Plus, a lot of my pros and cons are true for both books.

About the Series

The series blew up when a Canadian streamer Crave sold the territory rights to Heated Rivalry to HBO in the U.S. The finale dropped the day after Christmas and the books are sold out everywhere—which, actually, reflects a failure on behalf of the publisher, who didn’t order enough extra copies. As frustrated readers have expressed, this series could have deservedly hit the NYT bestseller list immediately as it’s topping the charts across eBooks and other formats.

The series hinges most notably on two rivals, Shane and Ilya, who grew up in the NHL being pitted against each other since before their rookie seasons. In the show, Shane plays for Montreal and Ilya for Boston. They’re always 1-2 for awards, partnerships, winnings, etc. and each face pressure for different reasons.

Shane’s a bit more of a golden boy—blessed in the rink, but quiet and unable sometimes to handle the spotlight. Ilya is under a ton of pressure from his family and country, who unfairly guilt him re: money and reputation. He’s much more brash, standoffish, and (hilariously) abrupt in a way many rightfully consider rude.

The two hook up before their rookie summer, and the next decade features a string of on-again-off-again meetups and secret moments, gradually building into a romance that have the two reconsidering the structure of their entire lives.

The rest of the books focus on other hockey players and pairings. For example, a crucial plot point between Shane and Ilya depends on the outcome of the Scott Hunter and Kip book which comes first—a hockey player falling for the barista who makes his pregame smoothie.

To the series’ credit, I hadn’t realized until the institutional tension of the book that the NHL does not feature a single outed hockey player. As the book notes, it’s statistically likely that there are a few who just don’t believe they can be out of the closet and still maintain their career, so that undercurrent shapes the series as a whole.

The Writing + Book

I was very surprised by storytelling style of the books, because I was admittedly expecting a lot more to make it stand out to be adapted in the first place. Jacob Tierney, the showrunner, apparently aligns with a lot of the taste, so that makes more sense in hindsight.

The writing feels plainspoken, straightforward, and not very colorful. (It’s not grating either. It just doesn’t feel like much at all.)

These sections are from the first book, Game Changer.

To me, the books in the series are notable in that they create the bones of the TV show, which takes the scenes mentioned and actually fills in the gaps to make each moment more resonant. It’s a deeply faithful adaptation, with the dialogue and events unfolding as they do in the books.

But I've realized I’m enjoying the books because I’m enjoying reliving the show within my own head, not on their own merit. The sentence structure doesn’t vary, and it’s not all that imaginative in detail, so the book's qualities don't affect me much as a reader.

See what I mean? That prose style just isn't for me, so I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the books if I’d read them before watching the show; luckily, books don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a lot of seemed and felt and telling that doesn’t push the envelope. I’m told rather than shown they’re falling for each other, especially considering the attraction and the leap happens pretty quickly.

Rachel Reid, of course, captured the institutional tension of the lack of (out) gay players in the NHL, and that structure is load-bearing in the plot. I think the strengths appear mostly in the dialogue and certain sweet moments that rely on the hook rather than in a section-by-section execution the way that I'm used to.

Wherever you land on your preferences, keep in mind that this is a high-heat series. An educational one, some might say! I had to Google one or two things. That might affect whether you'd like to pick it up.

The Romantic Development

So as noted, it's very sex-forward and the romance largely develops after endless hookups. I’m sure there are aspects to clandestine hookups and “taking what you can get” in romances that are deemed taboo (in this case, queerness by the standards of hockey culture—also it's worth noting that the timeline starts in 2008) that maybe go over my head because I’m not in any way queer. My normal standards of judging whether the connection quality required for me to root for a romance is there (versus "instalove" based on the idea of someone rather than the person themselves) may not entirely apply based on their situation, but I do think it varied between Game Changer and Heated Rivalry.

With Ilya and Shane, there’s a silent understanding of being head-to-head their entire careers, following similar arcs, and being up-and-down in alternating way, so they understand some of the peaks and devastations the other faces at a given time without entirely having to verbalize it. There still wasn't a lot of vulnerability for a while so you just had to trust the "love" part of the pitch, but I loved once it appeared. Like many, I adored the phone call monologue in Russian and that was a turning point for me.

I’d say Ilya and Shane are more compelling to me than the other couples because of the shared understanding, but both books definitely have the admissions of exclusive attraction (and yes, the sex) coming before basic knowledge of each other. It's more so that—like Ilya pointed out in their first encounter—there's nobody else around who allows them to be curious. They're limited at first by their secrecy, so the willingness to even hook up is the crucial ingredient.

Heated Rivalry is sex-forward, sure, but it's a slow-build on the relationship and feelings side, and that pacing feels done very successfully. Game Changer loses me more because it's instalust but also instalove, which I don't really like. Scott doesn't know Kip at all when he's making these broad declarations of life-changing emotion, and they go zero to a hundred in about two months.

For that reason, I can let the lack of knowledge of each other go in Heated Rivalry more so than in Game Changer in which they are both very sweet — but they basically know the extent of what would be on a Hinge profile for each other. Name, age, occupation, location. Maybe one or two ounces of trivia. (It also felt far too long in comparison with Heated Rivalry, which felt much pacier.)

Where I thought Game Changers excelled over Heated Rivalry was in the complexity of emotion after getting together. There's an ending section in Game Changer of Kip feeling—not resentful about the secret but stuck as other people changed around him—that resonated and built in a more satisfying way, especially layered into the realization that a relationship feels uneven in support and comparison. Granted, he did some of that to himself but him realizing he had to rebalance a relationship he really loved felt more textured.

The most significant example of this to me was when Kip got frustrated that he couldn't talk about a bad day because of the pressure his partner was under, and started to resent that Scott hadn't even asked him. (I talk about this more in my accompanying voice note, so will get to that.)

I think that's a tipping point for many people in the domain of making a relationship real versus honeymoon—needing to troubleshoot a dynamic (say, when the emotional relief is tipped all towards one person as in here), but not wanting to burden someone or imply that it's not working either. You have to trust it'll rebalance, merge communication styles, bring up needs, etc. and someone's reaction to that point of compromise tells you a whole lot!

Heated Rivalry sees Shane and Ilya on mostly equal footing with different strengths, weaknesses, and challenges; Game Changer seems more about power dynamics and negotiating various moments of unevenness in the aftermath of getting together. Also, Kip and Scott were sweet but the instalove didn't do much for me; Shane and Ilya had better chemistry to me.

A Spoiler Moment in Game Changer I Must Discuss

Small detail, but I also hate when people are precious about the millionaire fantasy. There’s pride, and then there’s being stupid (lmao) especially since the offer was extremely reasonable within the context, developed relationship, stakes, the obscene amount of money Scott had and his loneliness of not knowing who he can possibly spend it on. In the way Rachel Reid developed the prior half of the story, it didn't come across as romantic for Kip to turn it down; instead, everything established up until then made it feel like an enormously empty gesture that made the situation so much harder for no good reason. I was not convinced by it.

It actually didn’t feel in-character for Kip to turn that down considering the challenges he faced and how much he had to do to incorporate Scott within his life. Accepting the offer wouldn’t have made me think Kip was in any way viewing Scott as his meal ticket, and in fact would have made the pressure systems feel even more even. I just think that because the traits that that gesture was supposed to establish (Kip's love for Scott as Scott, his desire to get it done himself, the ways he burdened himself for Scott) were already in place, the trope didn't move anything. It just came off as really ignorant. Maybe that says more about me and my practicality though.

Overall Thoughts

I think I'm more articulate about Heated Rivalry and how it compares to the adaptation in my voice note, which I'll link. Overall, I liked it but didn't connect to the writing at all, which took me out the entire time. Some of that is style and personal preference.

Because I took so much detail and emotion in with me from the show, I sailed through it. But for that reason, I'd recommend going for the show first then the books for the most optimized experience if you're a reader who aligns with my taste.

I loved Ilya, the banter, and the dialogue. The institutional tension of their circumstances did most of the heavy lifting. I love pretty much the whole social bubble, edit fandom, etc. centered around the books and what it's doing for both readers and non-readers. The loon! The songs! The "will.you.come.to.my.cottage.this.summer."

There was plenty to compliment about Heated Rivalry as an entity, and plenty of people (including myself) find it moving for various reasons. I wish I could rewatch it again because it absolutely lived up to my expectations, and reading the book series was a way to relive some of my favorite sections and moments.

I'll read The Long Game, the next book in Shane and Ilya's story, and then might circle back to other books—but might wait until other couples appear, if they do, in the show later before reading any other pairings. I'm just not sure the books will stand alone for me based on my particular style preferences and what grips me as a reader.

Linking the trailer and my voice note below (once posted) instead of the opening pages. Do with that what you will.