Welcome to the world of romance, Heated Rivalry fans! If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who bought Rachel Reid’s books after watching the HBO series, you might be curious about the conventions of the genre—do you need to read the series in order? Will Shane and Ilya break up in the show’s next season? We’re here to help.
Two of the six books in Reid’s Game Changers series, Heated Rivalry and The Long Game, follow the story of ice hockey superstars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov; most of the TV series came from the book of the same name. The other four books in the series are interconnected standalones, each telling the story of a different couple in the same intense world of men’s professional hockey. (Yes, Shane and Ilya do make guest appearances.)
The books, all published by Carina Press/Harlequin, can be picked up in any order; if you want to read about Shane and Ilya, you can jump in with Heated Rivalry, or if you prefer reading a series from the beginning you can start with Game Changer, where you’ll get the full story of Scott Hunter and Kip Grady, most of which was compressed into Episode 3 of the TV show.
The defining feature of a romance is the way it ends, usually with a happily-ever-after, occasionally with a happily-for-now—and that’s where we left Ilya and Shane in the deeply swoony conclusion of Heated Rivalry. After years of being together for only hours at a time while their teams are in the same city, they finally spend weeks sequestered at Shane’s isolated cottage, where they exchange vows of love. And yet it’s a classic HFN ending: Although they’re happy in the moment, they don’t think the rigid, heteronormative hockey world will accept their relationship. Upon hearing their plan to stay closeted until they retire, Shane’s mother is all of us, exclaiming, “Oh no, that’s sad!”
In The Long Game, which will presumably form the basis for the show’s second season, Shane and Ilya’s relationship goes through ups and downs. Shane’s plan to create a hockey school and foundation with Ilya comes to fruition, but Ilya struggles with his new life in Ottawa, where he transferred to be closer to Shane. The two make tentative forays into building a queer community, including a charming double date with Ryan Price and Fabian Salah, the main characters of Tough Guy, the third book in the series. Even though The Long Game ends with Shane and Ilya’s wedding, a hallmark of the happily-ever-after, too much about their future in hockey remains unsettled.
That’s where Unrivaled, the recently announced seventh book in the Game Changers series, will pick up when it’s released this September. Fans of the show who are unfamiliar with romance conventions worried that this would mean a catastrophic ending for Shane and Ilya, having been trained by books, television shows, and movies to expect misery and even death for queer people who dare to embrace happiness on their own terms. To this, romance readers only smiled and reassured them that in romance, the HEA is an ironclad guarantee, no matter what obstacles the characters face. Yes, Reid might put them through the wringer, but their ending will be all the sweeter because of it.
Jennifer Prokop is co-host of the romance podcast Fated Mates.
