Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
by Jeff Baker
NOTE: Of course, this review contains a bunch of spoilers.
“You know those guys on rival teams who act like they hate each other when the game is playing but are really good friends when the game is over? Well, this takes it to its logical extreme…”
—-Kenny Blasco, explaining the TV show “Heated Rivalry.”
It’s almost impossible to scroll through any LGBT social media or websites without seeing references to “Heated Rivalry.” The Canadian Gay Hockey Romance that has taken television audiences by storm. But before there was a TV show, there was the book: “Heated Rivalry” by Canadian author and hockey fan Rachel Reid. Part of her “Game Changers” series first published in 2019 and actually the second book in the series. While at least one of the characters from the first book shows up in “Heated Rivalry,” Shane and Ilya’s story is in Book Two and they aren’t in every book in her series of Gay Hockey Romances (a genre I didn’t even know existed until a while back.)
Closeted young Canadian Hockey star Shane Hollander is living a seemingly heterosexual life until he meets Ilya Rozanov an intense young Russian superstar. Their rivalry is promoted by the press and it is instant dislike between the two young men. Then a chance meeting alone in the locker room shower early in their professional careers leads to intense sex in a hotel room, resulting in several secret sexual encounters over the next few years.
During this, they still are not friends. They swear they don’t actually like each other. Shane is telling himself he isn’t Gay (Spoiler: Shane’s Gay.) and Ilya knows he’s Bi. Compounding their mutual dislike is the fact that the two men are jealous of the other. Shane is angry at his team being beaten by Ilya’s (“Ilya Rosanov was…Infuriatingly good…”) Shane does not like coming in second to anybody, especially Ilya, who was even first pick in the draft. Shane was second which makes Shane even madder.
Ilya is jealous of Shane’s idyllic home life: “…his perfect home town that loved him so very, very much…” Ilya thinks at one point. Ilya may be a hockey superstar but he lives in the oppressive Russian system. To top it off, he is raised by an abusive father and Ilya’s older brother is not much better. With his Mother gone, Ilya really has nobody to care about, and he has pretty much been groomed for hockey.
Ilya and Shane’s relationship could simply be Shane-and-Ilya-screw, play-hockey, snarl-at-each-other, wallow-in-their-angst and screw again. Basically enemies-with-benefits, but it becomes more than that. As the two of them struggle with the realization that they are falling in love and the macho world of Ice Hockey is full of career-ending homophobia, Reid perfectly conveys their angst turning into sweet, closeted romance as the two young men begin to care about one another and eventually (Surprise. This IS a Gay Hockey romance.) get together over the course of a decade.
Showing Reid’s skill with character are the later scenes of Ilya visiting with Shane’s family who accept him and become his family. These scenes are sweet without being mawkish and are not overdone. The humor and awkwardness are handled very well and there is not a moment when the characters feel like cardboard props.
A heads-up to readers: The sex scenes are seriously explicit. There are some genuinely funny moments in there but also there is no “fade to black.”
The closest “Heated Rivalry” comes to “fade to black” is when Shane gets clobbered on the ice and winds up in the hospital with a season-ending, but not career-ending, injury. (A harrowing and very well-written scene, by the way.)
All-in-all “Heated Rivalry” is a fun, sweet read.
Even if you don’t understand hockey.
UPDATE: At the time I wrote this I had only read “Heated Rivalry,” the second book in Reid’s series and thus didn’t realize that while Shane and Ilya are the focus of only two of the novels so far, they appear as supporting characters in other books of the series. —jeff
Here’s a link to buy “Heated Rivalry” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220966494-heated-rivalry?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=zEs7o5KgkJ&rank=1
Jeff Baker writes about reading and writing sci-fi, fantasy and horror and other sundry matters on or around the Thirteenth of every month. He appreciates that he is posting about hockey on Friday the Thirteenth, but he has never kissed a hockey player. He writes at least one story a week on his blog authorjeffbaker https://authorjeffbaker.com/and wastes time on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jeff.baker.524042 and BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/jeffbakerauthor.bsky.social and on Mastodon (as “Mike Mayak.”) https://mastodon.otherworldsink.com/@MikeMayak