The Heated Rivalry phenomenon: Rachel Reid’s hockey romance that has readers (and bookshops) in a spin

I have a confession that is both deeply unprofessional (as a bookseller) and also painfully on-brand (as a human): I completely missed Heated Rivalry.

While the world was apparently losing its collective mind over a pair of fictional hockey players and their extremely… committed rivalry, I was off in my own lane, reading other things, doing grown-up admin, and generally behaving like someone who forgets entire cultural moments until they arrive, fully formed, in front of me, wearing a glittery coat and shouting, “WE ARE OBSESSED NOW.”

And that is what grabbed my attention. Not that I’m the target market. Not that I’ve been secretly longing for spicy M/M hockey romance. It’s the readers. The feral joy. The devotion. The “I have not known peace since I met Shane and Ilya” energy. It is genuinely gorgeous to see people this excited about a book again, and to watch a story become a shared language. At Chapters Bookstore Dublin, we see reader enthusiasm up close, and there is something genuinely gorgeous about it. In a time when everyone’s attention is shredded into glitter, here are people reading with their whole chest again.

So what is Heated Rivalry and where did it come from?

Heated Rivalry is a 2019 queer sports romance novel by Canadian author Rachel Reid. It sits inside Reid’s wider Game Changers series, published through Carina Press, and centred on M/M relationships in and around professional ice hockey.

Reid has spoken about writing into the reality of hockey culture, particularly the pressure, secrecy, and homophobia that closeted players might face, and what it costs to live a life where love has to be hidden or managed.

That foundation matters, because it’s a big part of why the story hits so hard. This isn’t “hockey as wallpaper”. Fans and reviewers keep returning to the authenticity: the sport feels real, the stakes feel real, and the emotional consequences of secrecy feel bruisingly plausible.

What is it about?

At the centre are two rival NHL stars: Shane Hollander (Canadian, controlled, disciplined) and Ilya Rozanov (Russian, charismatic, chaotic, and allergic to emotional safety).

They start as enemies. They stay rivals in public. But privately, across years, tournaments, hook-ups, and growing intimacy, they become something else entirely: a secret relationship that keeps resurfacing, deepening, and complicating everything.

The TV adaptation description captures the core well: it’s an intense, long-running, hidden relationship played out against a hypermasculine sport, with both men navigating career risk, identity, and what love looks like when you’re not allowed to have it openly.

Why has the world suddenly gone mad for it?

A few reasons, all stacking on top of each other like a perfectly unstable tower of desire, angst and serotonin.

1) The dynamic is catnip.
Enemies-to-lovers is a classic for a reason. Done well, it delivers tension, banter, vulnerability, and that addictive sense that you’re watching two people become each other’s exception. Reid gives readers a rivalry that is not just competitive, but intimate, obsessive, and emotionally inevitable.

2) It’s explicit, but it’s also tender (and that combo is rare).
A lot of commentary around the TV series and the books points to how the intimacy is portrayed: hot, yes, but also emotionally grounded, consent-forward, and character-revealing.

3) The adaptation lit the fuse.
The Heated Rivalry TV series premiered on 28 November 2025 and it dragged the books into the mainstream at speed.
The knock-on effect in publishing has been dramatic. Trade coverage reported huge spikes in print sales for Heated Rivalry and a surge across the wider Game Changers series following the show’s release.

4) It became a community, not just a book.
The coverage is full of people describing how fandom works here: the memes, the rereads, the group chats, the BookTok clips, the shared squealing, the collective “come suffer with us”. That kind of enthusiasm is contagious, and it’s part of what makes the phenomenon feel so big.

5) The numbers turned it into a publishing event.
Harlequin has publicly discussed the scale of sales for the series, with reporting in late 2025 and early 2026 placing Game Changers at around 650,000 copies sold.

Publishing-wise, it’s also interesting for us in Ireland because this book comes to many readers via Harlequin. Specifically, it was published by Carina Press, which sits under the Harlequin umbrella. And for anyone who grew up on this island, “Harlequin” translates instantly into “Mills & Boon”. Same family, same romance DNA, just different packaging and readerships depending on the market.

Which is why it is such fun, as a Dublin bookshop, to have Harlequin titles in stock that don’t look or feel like the Harlequin of expectation. It is genuinely cheering to see a powerhouse romance publisher widening the tent, publishing for more kinds of romance readers, and bringing new voices and new stories into the mainstream.

A Clear Reading Path For The Obsessed.
Readers love knowing where to go next, especially when they’re emotionally wrecked in a happy way. Which brings us to order.

Game Changers books in order (and the Shane & Ilya path)

If you want to read the Rachel Reid Game Changers series in order, here’s the publication sequence most readers follow:

1. Game Changer (2018)
2. Heated Rivalry (2019)
3. Tough Guy (2020)
4. Common Goal (2020)
5. Role Model (2021)
6. The Long Game (2022)
7. Unrivaled (2026 – on preorder)

If you are here specifically for Shane and Ilya (and many people are), the essential route is:

Heated Rivalry → The Long Game

And yes, if you are reading this with a slightly frantic expression, we understand.

Why it’s especially fun in a Dublin bookshop (and why we’re stocking it)

At Chapters Bookstore Dublin, we love a good literary discovery. We also love a good reader-led stampede.

We currently have all of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers titles, which is its own little delight. There’s something pleasing about the journey: a book published under the Harlequin umbrella, beloved online, travelling reader-to-reader until it lands here, on a shelf in the heart of Dublin, waiting to ruin someone’s weekend in exactly the way they wanted.

It’s also a small reminder of why we love running a New and Secondhand Independent Bookstore in Dublin. Sometimes a cultural moment doesn’t arrive through the front door with a press release. Sometimes it arrives through customers. Through overheard conversations. Through someone walking up to the counter saying, “Do you have Heated Rivalry?” in the tone of a person asking for medication.

And honestly, that is the best kind of bookselling.