So right now I have a number of non-romance community friends coming up to me and saying stuff like:
“Oh hey sounds like some hockey fic finally made it onto TV, huh?”
“Yo Candy have you heard of the gay hockey romance TV show?”
“How excited are you about the gay hockey smut on TV?”
“Candy why is your entire Tumblr dashboard filled with naked asses?”
To which I say: excuse me, these are not just “naked asses.”
These are triple-platinum certified, AAA grade dumptrucks. Can dumptruck butts even be certified platinum, Sisqo hit notwithstanding?
Fuck you, they can now. These asses can do anything. These asses can fly you to the fucking moon. These asses were sculpted by the hand of God, after which God cut their own hand off because it had achieved perfection, so why sculpt anything else ever. Connor Storrie’s ass in particular is a mesmerizingly perfect hemisphere. He could never sneak into an enemy base because he is dummy thicc and the thunderclap of those asscheeks would absolutely alert the guards for miles around. Do you understand what I’m saying?
But the thing is, you need to watch the show — I can’t believe I’m saying this after what I’ve just said above — not for the asses, but because the actors are a delight to watch. It’s not that they’re beautiful, or at least, not only because of that.
It’s because they inhabit their characters to a degree that is frankly eerie.
Like: the way Connor Storrie holds his body as Ilya Rozanov in every scene. Man doesn’t stand like an American, though he very much is. (Storrie is a Texan. A Texan.) And what does “doesn’t stand like an American” even mean? Look, I can’t fuckin’ explain it, OK, but white American dudes tend to hold themselves A Way, and he doesn’t do it. It’s like porn (which this show delivers on, by the way). I just know it when I see it.
That’s not even going into Storrie’s near-impeccable Russian (which he apparently acquired over three weeks), or the things he’s able to do with his eyes, or the curl of an upper lip, or a flick of his eyebrow.
And then there’s Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander. Shane, the lawful good muppet to Ilya’s chaos gremlin freak. Williams nails every microexpression, especially in the scenes in which he’s texting Ilya: vulnerability, frustration, reluctant amusement, endearment—they all flicker across his face. He’s stiff and awkward, which you might initially mistake for bad acting, except no, that’s Shane: Shane is an awkward motherfucker! Shane Hollander has zero grace until you strap skates on him, or until he’s confronted by Ilya Rozanov’s dick.
Sure, sure, my friends say. Watch it for the acting. That’s what you say. That’s not what you’re reblogging on Tumblr, you thirsty bitch.
I mean, yeah. I’m mostly posting gifsets of dumptruck butts because I need everyone I know to watch this show, and while I honestly find this image of Ilya giving Shane the once-over when they first meet theee actual hottest thing, who the fuck cares about that who hasn’t seen the show already?
That’s not going to grab people’s attention. Oh, look at this attractive white dude giving someone the ole bedroom eyes. Boh-ring. NEXT.
Ilya Rozanov, naked and glistening with water, jorkin’ it in the locker room showers while maintaining hideously uncomfortable eye contact with Shane? That’s an attention-grabber. And I’ve sold three different people into watching this show because of it.
So anyway, I’ve had to talk to several friends about this show, and about why I, a person who has worked hard all their life to achieve the perfect body (potato-shaped) care about sports romance, and I’ve come up with this Heated Rivalry explainer of sorts. Maybe you’ll find this helpful as you navigate conversations with other people in your life who are like, hey, I hear you like smut! What do you think of that smutty hockey show? Or, like, if you haven’t checked out either the book or the show, and somehow have avoided learning anything about either of them, maybe this will finally push you over the edge? In fact, I hope it does. Consider this me kicking you down a well lined with bare chests and fake team logos of dubious quality and screaming This! Is! Heated Rivalry!
What the hell is Heated Rivalry?
It’s not a fic, it’s a hockey romance novel by Rachel Reid. The two main characters are Ilya Rozanov, Russian hockey wunderkind, and Shane Hollander, Canadian hockey wunderkind. (And yeah, Shane bears a physical resemblance to Sid Crosby, and Ilya being Russian and playing for a rival team immediately raises the spectre of Alexander Ovechkin, but as far as I know, this isn’t scrubbed Sid/Ovi fic, even if, uh, the inspiration seems pretty clear.)
Shane and Ilya meet rookie year, find each other infuriating yet irresistible, rapidly hook up, and then continue to hook up over many, many years, only to slowly, excruciatingly, fall in love. It’s somehow both slow-burn and bangs immediately. You know U-Haul lesbians? These guys are the exact opposite. (Move-away gays? I’ll have to workshop that more.)
Anyway. The book is mostly sex scenes by volume, and not a single one is repetitive or wasted, because it’s how the character and relationship development happen.
It’s now a TV show, adapted by Jacob Tierney. That’s the same guy who brought you Letterkenny and Shoresy, neither of which I’ve watched, but which I’ve been aware of for years now because people whose tastes I trust have watched them and loved them and told me I should watch them. Sorry, guys, it took the power of gay hockey idiots to drag me into the Tierney-verse. I’m here now, and I love it!
The thing you need to know about this show is: it leans in. It fully commits to the bit. Look, I know I keep talking about how this show is worth watching above and beyond the sex and the beefcake, but the fact of the matter is, you can’t extricate the show from the sex and the beefcake, because it’s a show. About hockey players. Who fall in love because they fuck. A lot. Over many years. So yes, I’m going to talk about the sex.
Anyway, yeah. The sex scenes. They skirt just shy of pornography, but oh my god they’re hot and beautifully shot, and while they show you neither hole nor hog, they do so so much with facial expression, and bodies in motion, and, crucially, soundscape. You don’t just hear people moaning. You hear them kissing. You hear the very distinct wet, rhythmic sounds of a mouth sucking on dick. You hear skin slapping against skin. When Ilya swallows a load, he makes a horny little humming noise.
These sounds, more than anything, make the sex scenes feel earthy and real. How many sex scenes have you watched in which the soundtrack takes over just as the action heats up? You hear some kissing noises maybe, and some panting, and then as soon as Boning is Imminent, the violins or synths soar and drown almost anything else out; there might be some tactically deployed ah’s and ooh’s, timed to sync with the music, but nothing else to tie the writhing actors to the tactile reality of sex.
That doesn’t happen here. Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely background music. But that takes a back seat to the sounds of two men having wet, messy, frantic, mind-blowing sex. And that’s honestly amazing and radical, because we don’t get a whole lot of movie or TV depictions of queer sex that end well for the people involved. Jacob Tierney put it best in an interview with Evan Ross Katz:
These are people learning about each other and their relationship by fucking. That’s how they’re understanding each other. It’s how they play out their dynamics. It’s the only time, especially in the first two episodes, that they’re not lying to each other, that they’re not doing boisterous dumb boy stuff and being like, “Fuck you, fuck you.” This is when they get vulnerable with each other. This is when they get real. And then the other thing that was important to me is that like… why shouldn’t we get some horny good sex for gay people on TV? Like sex that we know is not going to end in misery or AIDS or punishment. We often get punished for getting sex as characters in queer storylines. So I think you’re weirdly in a safe, nurturing space to watch people fuck.
So yeah, this story is about sex—gay sex, specifically, by people who fall in love, stay in love, and make it work—and I’m super thrilled about all that, ackshually.
But underlying all that glorious sex are two main conflicts that animate the plot, such as it is:
First of all: Shane and Ilya are people who talk past each other for years—at first because they’re not really interested in talking to each other because they’re both hyper-competitive buttholes, but after a while, because they simply lack the context and means of understanding each other. Their cultural gulf is immense. There’s a scene in episode 2 in which Shane tries to make some post-nut small talk with Ilya about his annual summer visit to Russia, and things skate perilously close to the personal. Shane asks Ilya whether he likes it there; Ilya doesn’t even know how to process that question, because that’s not the fucking point—that’s never the point about going home. The quiet bafflement that ensues is excruciating; these guys just don’t know how to express some deeply important things to each other. Not yet.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly: the homophobia that’s the background radiation of professional men’s team sports played at the very highest levels are warping the two of them and their burgeoning love. (This reality—not just for these fictional hockey boys, but for real-life hockey boys, and football, basketball, and baseball boys—feels even more painful now than it did when I first read the book in 2020 and it sure makes me feel some kind of way!). Shane and Ilya are both keeping a secret which, if exposed, has immense implications for their career, their friendships, and possibly their personal safety, and the story makes you feel it by taking the bone-deep fear as a given from the very beginning.
They can’t be out. They must always be each other’s dirty little secret. And that’s the real killer, isn’t it? The first problem is personal: something they can work out with communication, empathy, and commitment. Maybe some therapy, too.
The second problem, though? That’s systemic, baby. No amount of therapy is going to conquer an entire society’s worth of homophobia. It is an issue that has ruined careers and ended lives.
And, okay, fine, the fact that they’re playing for rival teams is also a big deal. Kind of a conflict of interest. Oops? But, look, the lesbians have—as always—shown us the way: not once, but twice, a hockey player from Team America has married a hockey player from Team Canada. If the lesbians can do it, boys, so can you. I believe in you!
All of which to say: this story looks like a pretty standard enemies-to-lovers or rivals-to-lovers setup, but scratch the surface and you’ll see that it’s actually about trying to fight for enough space to let your love breathe, and then carve out even more space so the love can grow. If you’ve watched episode three, that particular story makes it even more clear that this is the thesis of the show. It’s beating heart.
Read the book. Watch the show. The show, in particular, is exceptionally well-made, which is high praise coming from me, a legendary hater of romance novel adaptations — I’ll spare you my opinions on Bridgerton and the Red, White & Royal Blue movie).
Watch what Storrie and Williams do with their faces and their postures.
Pay attention to how the camera frames shots and lingers for exactly the right amount of time to convey desire and longing.
Delight in the jokes, and in the moments when these two hockey boys act like the adorable idiots they are.
And yeah, this is important, too: revel in some of the best gay sex scenes to ever grace your TV screen.
We’ve had enough queer tears. Let’s have some queer orgasms.
Big massive thanks to Candy for this banger (lol). You can stream Heated Rivalry on HBO Max and on Crave.
This show is one of the best adaptations of anything I’ve ever seen. I’m obsessed!
Thank you for the review! I’ve held off on watching because I, too, have loathed most romance novel adaptations (side note, am VERY interested in your thoughts on Bridgerton and Red, White, and Royal Blue). I’m all for shows about queer joy though, so this looks great. And those gifs you posted! *fans face*
Off to check it out and maybe drag my husband into watching…he likes hockey so, maybe? Actual question, how are the hockey scenes?
Great review! I haven’t read the book (or seen the show) but am interested now.
Also, GAME CHANGERS VOL. 1, which includes HEATED RIVALRY and 2 other hockey romances, is on sale
for $1.99! (It may be listed as GAME CHANGERS COLLECTION.)
Ooooo, Candy! My day–hell, my December is made! What a great review–edgy, honest, perceptive, and funny. Thank you!
This is a super well-written review! It’s made me curious, though I’ve thus far avoided watching, not just because it’s not easy for me to access but also because the episodes are dropping weekly (which I think is great) and there’s been a lot of discourse around it online. I also think the explicit content might be…too explicit for me, but it’s good to hear that it’s well done.
My (ostensibly) unpopular opinion re: Reid’s books is that I enjoyed them, and I love an enemies/rivals to lovers set up, especially one that has a great emotional payoff. However, when viewed through a more critical lens (I don’t mean critical as in just negative here), the prose is, to me, mediocre and there are definitely a couple of instances of “women writing men” that stood out to me. But I’ve also enjoyed and even loved plenty of other books of which the same could be said. That said, I’ve been a little surprised to see so many people loving them, and while I can’t figure out a reader’s complete thought process through a gushpost on socials – and to reiterate, I enjoyed them! – I do think we could, as a community (i.e. romance), aspire to engage with, and produce, better writing (this has also made me realise that I haven’t read as many of the TikTok-popular books as I thought, because I hear a lot of opinions that a lot of that writing is also not super great).
My (definitely) unpopular opinion re: Bridgerton is that it’s not nearly as good as many make it out to be, that if Rhimes wanted to adapt historical fiction into an ensemble, multiplot show, there were likely better novels to use rather than JQ’s straight (hah) romance novels, which are for sure problematic in multiple instances but which I genuinely enjoyed back in the day. Not to mention how it handles race has struck me as thoroughly bizarre thus far, but this isn’t the place to elaborate.
RWRB is also, imo, an objectively bad film with nowhere near the charm of the novel (which in and of itself has plotting issues, among others). Notably the fact that it’s heavily epistolary, and that just cannot be translated to screen easily, but they didn’t even try here.
Nobody asked for those last two paragraphs haha, but all of that is to say, I agree with @Bellethemew and would love your thoughts on Bridgerton+RWRB because I tend to see largely positive views on both.
I was hoping you guys would review this. Thank you Candy!
I’m in the minority because while I read Heated Rivals, I didn’t care for it. I thought the pacing was off and I just didn’t care enough about the characters to get past the writing ticks.
That said, I thought the trailer looked good. Not sure if it looked good enough to subscribe to HBO again, but I am intrigued.
@M – we cross posted but I agree with your assessment of Reid’s books. They’re emotionally compelling but they’re not that well written. But there’s clearly something about the chemistry (between the MCs and between the reader and the books) that resonates with a lot of readers.
And yeah, I think the show might be too explicit for my post menopausal tastes.
I would like to know what DDD thinks about this show.
Thrilled to see the review, and am thoroughly enjoying the show.
Rachel Reid is I think at least the fourth best queer hockey romance series writer I have read. Which is one of those opinions I would never have guessed I would find myself holding, much less passionately.
Definitely the best romance novel adaptation I’ve encountered to date tho.
I don’t think there is really much of any hockey involved, which is for the best. Like there are arenas and ice and sports stuff exists but it doesn’t matter that I know nothing about how that works. So I can’t swear to this, but there probably aren’t a lot of irksome inaccuracies for people who do care? The actors don’t look like hockey players, I don’t think, but they’re such better actors than is usually allowed in romance that it seems petty to complain.
I really hope this wasn’t originally RPF, as that gives me the squick. It was bad enough when I thought it was cap/winter soldier fan fic – if that is even a different thing than Stucky? I really only marginally if at all know what I am talking about here, as it’s an ignorance is bliss situation for me.
@kkw – I would love to know your hockey romance series writer rankings!
I think my top two are E.L. Massey and Avon Gale (her solo series, not the collab).
@cleo For me, Taylor Fitzpatrick is in a tier of her own. Then I like Ari Baran and Avon Gale about equally, so it’s hard to say who’s second and who’s third, probably Gale than Baran but really mood dependent. Then Rachel Reid and several others are about on par but Ilya in particular is such a fun character I think it tips the scale to put her fourth.
This is such a fantastic review (and yes I will get around to watching it myself)
This review made me laugh so hard. Oh my gosh. I’m snickering right now just thinking about it.
I loved HEATED RIVALRY and I’ve read it several times, but I’m really on the fence about watching the show. I generally don’t really like tons of (or, if I’m honest, any) sex on screen for whatever reason. On the other hand, the trailer looks amazing. And so many people are gushing over this series. And I loved the book. So I may cave and give it a try. We’ll see.
Avon Gale’s SCORING CHANCES series is so good. I like every single book in the series. And I love that it isn’t the NHL or even the AHL. It’s like the lowest tier of professional hockey. These dudes aren’t making any money. They live like regular schmoes. No one recognizes them. No one covers their games. But they still approach hockey as the professionals they are. And, apparently, fall for each other.
The series that introduced me to gay hockey players was Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy’s HIM and US. I love these books and have re-read them multiple times, but I just don’t see them mentioned when people are talking about the gay hockey romance genre. In all seriousness, what am I missing? These are both popular authors. They’ve both written tons of other hockey romances, mostly straight. As far as I can tell, the books have aged pretty well. Have they just fallen out of fashion or something?
@Bellethemew not much hockey at all, but the bits that exist are good enough that they don’t make my hockey fan friends mad.
In re: Rachel Reid’s writing quality: I’ll say that her sentences aren’t my favorite but her characters are compelling, especially Ilya; Heated Rivalry is far and away my favorite of her books. (I am incredibly picky about sentence-level quality, but also that’s only one part of writing craft, because I’ve read several beautifully-written books with flat/nonsensical characters, or pacing that drives me up the wall, etc.)
I will say that even if you don’t enjoy the book(s), give this show a shot! The core story is the same but I am not joking when I say that the acting quality is out of this world; props to the camerawork, too, and the incredible job Tierney has done adapting this.
@kkw in re: fic origins: one episode of the show is based on Game Changer, the first book in the series, and Game Changer did in fact start out as Captain America/Bucky Barnes fanfic. Stucky is the smushname (Steve/Bucky). The TV adaptation is different enough that like, some of the nods are there if you’re a huge MCU Captain America fan (apparently Scott wears a similar getup as Steve while running????). However, I went into the show fully aware that this episode was based on a book that started out as fic, and I didn’t really pick up on similarities. But if the ick is like, existential, that probably doesn’t help, ha.
Re: RWRB adaptation: the acting was stiff; the writing was clunky; the chemistry flat-out didn’t work; what in the HELL Was Uma Thurman’s accent??? And the sex scene made me cringe lol. I was genuinely excited about it; I love the book, it basically blew up my nine-year reading drought and brought me back to romance novels. I tried to have reasonable expectations about the movie but even taking into account ruined expectations, I think it was flat-out BAD.
Re: Bridgerton: OK so caveat that the Bridgerton books were not my bag, but I decided to watch the TV show because the previews looked like so much fun. And again: the acting quality just wasn’t there (with a few exceptions–Nicola Coughlan as Penelope is so much fun; Claudia Jessie knocks it out of the park as Eloise). Not even the out-of-this-world beauty of Rege-Jean Page could salvage it for me. The writing felt aggressively mid, and the pacing was afflicted with what I call Netflix pacing–SO much slop and wasted time in the cuts, lines left to linger a beat too long, etc. (The fact that Jacob Tierney understands timing and delivery is yet another reason why Heated Rivalry is so very good, by the way.)
And on top of all that, the Bridgerton worldbuilding was incoherent and weird? I love the idea that Queen Charlotte somehow radically changed the trajectory of the treatment of Black people and the African diaspora in general but, like…there was very little weight or thought given to how that would actually play out beyond “there are now Black dukes”? The implications were never fully thought through IMO; Britain at that point was furiously expanding its colonial empire (I was born and grew up in one of those colonies! Which, if you think of how huge the empire was, if you’re a person living in the world today, odds are good that you WERE born in a former British colony.) So how does that colonial conquest square with the new racial vision as put forth by the show? What happened to the East India Company? The timeline is all kinds of fucked because everything happened too fast. I mean yes monarchs in the 18th and 19th centuries held a lot more power than they do now but are you telling me that there wouldn’t have been a LOT of resistance from people who didn’t believe in this vision (i.e. the vast majority of the rich white people in Britain)? What about resistance from the people who stood to make bank from exploiting the natural resources and cheap labor of the colonies–chief of whom were the Crown? Etc. etc.
It’s a fantastic idea, but it ultimately felt like a veneer that had been slapped on vs. a storytelling decision that had been fully thought through.
Also, and this is a me thing lol vs. a critique of the show per se: I’m forever mad that Peneloise isn’t a thing. Look, IMO if the writers can change the race of several of the major characters, they can yeet the Penelope and Eloise storylines and have them marry each other. The chemistry between them was SO good and exactly what I wanted from a romance, and instead Penelope gets the most boring Bridgerton brother and Eloise gets oh god who fuckin’ CARES I don’t because it’s not Penelope lol. Give us Peneloise YOU COWARDS.
Anyway I made it through 2/3 of the first season of Bridgerton before giving up, and everything I’ve heard and read about it, including fans and haters, has made me glad I haven’t.
So that’s why I didn’t like the RWRB and Bridgerton adaptations. GO WATCH HEATED RIVALRY.
M: Okay, now I’m intrigued! I’ve heard of (and read) my fair share of “men writing women”, but I don’t really recall any instances of the opposite. Well, naturally I’ve read tons of male characters that were written by women, but what I mean is, what was it that stood out to you?
This show is a wonderful and surprising delight! I read and loved the books and now can’t stop smiling while watching the episodes (a normal amount of times) 🤣💜🏳️🌈
Could not agree more about all three TV adaptations @Candy. I did the math (by which I mean I looked up some statistics online and brought those numbers to math competent friends like they were an oracle at Delphi) and the odds of Violet having all those kids survive childhood in that time/location/class, and also be straight (I didn’t even stack the deck- I used conservative estimates despite the fact that heterosexuality was not even a concept at the time) is so vanishingly small that it is more plausible to have BOTH Daphne die before she could grow up to be a rapist AND have Peneloise. There is no rational reason we couldn’t have it all.
HOWEVER I needed everyone to carry on watching Bridgerton, even if it only plays to an empty room, so that Netflix is forced to carry on making them at least to Francesca’s season, which is the only book I remember liking out of the 20 odd Bridgerton books I nevertheless read all of. I need it, I deserve it, and it looks like they’re even finally going to queer it so I am very excited for it despite all previous life experience.
I do know, despite my best efforts, that Steve + Bucky = Stucky. But idk if Steve Rodgers *in his incarnation as Cap* and Bucky *as Winter Soldier* gets a different, more specific, ship name, as that is the vibe I get from Heated Rivalry. Intensely.
The first book/third episode pair that is actually acknowledged as originally Stucky fanfic is one that I assume was an AU where one of the two was not superserumed and the other was, but they have so little personality (or more charitably are so far developed from the inspiration) that idk which is even meant to be which. But even with the third episode being these two that no butt on earth can make me care about, I cannot get over how well done this show is and lord, talk about how everyone needs to watch it so they will make me more seasons: please, just… put it on and leave the room if you don’t care for it and mileage varies so no disrespect if you don’t, but please consider helping a bitch out here.
Regarding whether Game Changer is Stucky fic, the answer from Reid: https://www.salon.com/2025/12/06/heated-rivalry-gay-marvel-fanfic-rachel-reid/
@LML: I have to be honest, I haven’t watched it yet—and I’m not sure I will. It’s kind of the same reason I don’t listen to romances on audiobook: things are sometimes “too real” when I’m seeing them with my eyes or hearing them with my ears. When I’m reading, my brains keeps things on the “fuzzy” side—I can’t go fuzzy with a tv show or an audiobook, lol.
I’m loving the show so much! It is both compelling, high quality queer tv and a faithful book adaptation. I would like a smidge more hockey (I’ve been a hockey fan for a lot longer than I’ve been a romance reader!) but realize I’m in the minority.
Reid has always been adamant that her books are not RPF. She is a huge hockey fan so I think it would be impossible not to have certain real life personalities, playing styles, etc. show up in characters.
I second the rec of Avon Gale’s Scoring Chances series, the main characters play in a league several steps below the NHL and are not wealthy athletes, which is really refreshing in sports romance.
@DDD: I’ve read, respected and enjoyed your reviews and commentary here in the Pink Palace for years. At the same time, I’ve been mystified wondering how you manage to 1) do all that reading, 2) analyze your reading experiences, 3) synthesize them into lengthy (NOT a criticism) coherent and cohesive reviews and comments, all while living the other parts of your life.
Today, you’ve confirmed what I’ve long suspected: you’re able to maneuver through life by utilizing your multiple (marvelous) brains.
Now I can move on to other mysteries that cut into my reading time by occupying my (single) brain…
Candy!!! You’re back! Please review ALL of Heated Rivalry, and anything else you want.
Sometimes the stars align and you have great writing, great acting and great filmmaking. Heated Rivalry is such a comfort read for me so I am really glad that it was handled with so much care and respect. Huge thanks to Ddd for recommending the book in a Watcha reading, I think, way back then!!
book_reader_ea01sj71r4 – you asked about Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy. That (and Understatement of the Year by Bowen) was probably my introduction to gay hockey too. But I’m pretty ambivalent about it, which is why I don’t recommend it the way I recommend Scoring Chances. There are two guest reviews of Him on SBTB – an F and an A – and I fall somewhere between them.
On the one hand, I really resonated with the portrayal of Jamie’s bisexuality in Him. On the other hand, parts felt incredibly objectifying and fetishizing to me and kind of like a straight person’s idea / fantasy of what it’s like to be queer and that made me so uncomfortable (as a queer woman).
Me, a casual reader of this site since 2005 seeing who wrote this: omg!
This show has been dominating my tumblr feed and it’s on my to-watch list for sure, but I’m glad for the warning on noisy sex scenes. Misophonia prepares me to turn the volume down before things get hot and heavy so I can enjoy pretty men. 😅
I WANTED to love Bridgerton. Parts of it are good, everyone in it is beautiful, buuuuut. It misses the mark, the showrunners want an ensemble cast but that just dilutes the central love story of each season. And they are obsessed with adding in love triangles that didn’t even exist in the books for some reason. Benedict did get his pansexual awakening in S3 at least, which everyone was hoping they’d commit to after the first two seasons.
You guys this show! I liked the book when it came out and since I subscribe to HBOMax I decided to give it a shot and am soooo glad I did. I’ve already rewatched the first two episodes 3 times. These two actors are superb. And fearless. And beautiful. I am officially obsessed.
I loved reading these reviews and comments! My Facebook is taken over by the prettiest reels of Connor and Ilya, don’t know if the rest of you are suffering that too (!!) but honestly it just makes the Internet a joy again.
I want to add that in one of those clips above, Ilya’s crucifix is doing a lot, and I mean a lot, of work. Wow. The beauty of that cinematography and lighting.
The Him series and Rachel Reid were my first gay hockey books, but then it was a fast zoom to Avon Gale, Tal Bauer, Jesse Reign (friend and I both cried during The Legend Next Door) and Puckboys and… There are so many.
Brigham Vaughan is the author where I actually started to understand icing and offsides.
@Cleo – thanks for the perspective 🙂
@Mikey: apologies for the delayed response, I’ve been rereading The Long Game (the sequel to Heated Rivalry in case you haven’t read it) to give you a proper answer and it made me realise that it’s really just the prose in general that’s so simplistic and shallow that makes these characters sound…immature. In TLG they’re both nearing 30, and yet the dialogue has Shane especially sounding like a teenager (tics like “like” that may sound natural in speech, but just come across as infantile/infantilising in text). A generous reading of this would be that pro athletes don’t necessarily have a lot of time to develop other areas of their personality (which seems to be 100% true in real life, especially with hockey), but to be honest, since books like this already require some suspension of disbelief, I wish Reid had given at least Shane more interiority. Ilya still has some. I *want* to know if Shane enjoys x kind of movies, or y kind of video games, or has *some* interests outside of hockey and Ilya.
I don’t know how to add a spoiler tag in the comments so SPOILERS for The Long Game for those who haven’t read it:
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One sentence that sticks in my mind from the end of TLG, when Shane and Ilya move into the same house is that Shane thinks about all the photographs of the both of them that are now displayed and “still felt the urge to hide them in drawers, but loved seeing them. Loved knowing there was nothing to hide.” While TLG is more Ilya’s story, it spends a lot of time on Shane coming to terms with coming out. The book confronts how Ilya has made major sacrifices to be with Shane to the point of them having a pretty big argument about it that somehow gets resolved without Shane exploring his self-absorption for more than a couple of days (and a marriage proposal. which, if you think about it, is a very heterosexual solution that a lot of straight couples realise too late was a mistake, that they should have talked about things first, at the very least).
And at the end, while it’s completely understandable that an anxious/”uptight” introvert like Shane might have trouble with his 11-year secret queer relationship being finally publicly perceived, a better writer could have addressed this in a stronger, more nuanced way. Instead Reid gives us a throwaway line about Shane wanting to hide his photographs with Ilya in drawers that makes it seem like there has been no personal growth or introspection from Shane whatsoever. If it sounds like I’m reading too much into a throwaway sentence, that may be a fair assumption. But in my opinion, the words people use matter.
Another reason why I’m glad the concept of Death of the Author exists is a post by Reid on Instagram that I saw recently (link: https://www.instagram.com/p/DNvRkLXYimz/) that has some points about Ilya and Shane, a sort of shorthand reference guide re: their personalities. Two points stick out to me: “Ilya is very intelligent. Shane is NOT.” and then “Ilya is very observant and perceptive. Shane barely notices his own feelings.” There have been some who’ve read Shane as having autism (undiagnosed) and resonated with the character in that sense, and I believe I’ve seen Reid say that she didn’t consciously writer him as autistic, she understands why he may come across that way (there’s also a screenshot floating around somewhere where someone asks about Shane being autistic and I believe Reid said “oh I know. Shane doesn’t”, or something to this effect. For me, I:
1. I don’t want to read about characters the author just says are “not intelligent”. I think there are different kinds of intelligence, that not everyone has to be academically strong to be considered “intelligent,” that it’s possible to develop intelligences outside of hockey IQ even as a fairly one-note/onedimensional pro-athlete who’s been devoted to the game since age 5 (which I think is when a lot of hockey kids start the sport, at least in Canada), and that just saying “Shane is not intelligent” is reductive. As I said, with the suspension of disbelief that this book already requires, you don’t need to make every character self-aware and have a lot of interiority, I understand why Shane is written the way he is, but to have nobody in his life challenge him to be more self-aware (even if he has undiagnosed autism) seems like a lazy writing choice, and frustrating as a reader.
2. While I understand and sympathise with neurodivergent people who found comfort in Shane’s portrayal, I am not a fan of armchair diagnoses of neurodivergence, especially ones that are retconned. I see why people would consider Shane neurodivergent but sometimes traits like social awkwardness that neurotypical people may also have and share with neurodivergent people are just dubbed as neurodivergence, which I find frustrating.
This response got far too long and I apologise but I’ll end with the scene where Shane is attempting to coach participants at their hockey camp in the beginning of TLG. ““Okay,” Shane mumbled to a group of forty young hockey players. “So, you start at the goal line, and you receive a pass when you hit the blue line. I mean, there’ll be a whistle and then you go. And the puck is coming from the next person in line. No. Wait. It’s coming from the next person in line, but the opposite corner. Um…there’s two groups. One in each corner, and, uh…” Ilya felt like he’d somehow walked into one of Shane’s nightmares. Like he was being forced to present a lecture on a topic he knew nothing about.”
…why is a player who has captained an NHL franchise to multiple Stanley Cups coaching children (who have ostensibly paid a lot of money for these camps that are raising funds for mental health charities) if he’s so bad at it? Captaincy typically requires leadership + interpersonal skills beyond what’s on the ice, but that’s never acknowledged. Funnily enough, within a few paragraphs of this scene, Reid has Shane correct the angle of one child’s stick blade so the whole setup just seems lazy.
If this sounds like a lot of nitpicking it absolutely is, and I’ve let similarly half-baked details go in other books I’ve enjoyed/loved, which is a kind of hypocrisy I’ve learned to be okay with 🙂 Different strokes and all that.
@Candy: Thank you for addressing how incoherent Bridgerton’s worldbuilding is, as someone who’s also from and in a former British colony I found it deeply frustrating. I also have thoughts about how different non-white characters have been characterised (the so-called Indian representation in season 2 was, in my opinion, awful. And I’m Indian). I truly assumed that this was just going to be colorblind casting and hand-waving away all of Britain’s brutal colonial history like so many historical romances have done over the years, which honestly would have been better than whatever they’ve tried to do with the show – and I’ve watched all three seasons and the Queen Charlotte miniseries.
YES! ALL OF THIS!!!
Happy to see the return of Candy and this awesome expo of Heated Rivalry. The nuances in the performances from Hudson and Connor are so well done. With each rewatch, I find some new little facial expression that tugs at my heart. The sex between them has an arc and I find that so satisfying.
I do hope the entire series gets adapted.
Y’all will not believe Harlequin’s “statement” in this article about why there are no paperbacks of Heated Rivalry available.
So after rewatching Heated Rivalry, I was able to see some of the other players names. Marleau, Kane, Wilson, Roy, Lapointe. Are those supposed to be Easter eggs for hockey fans.
Loving Heated Rivalry on-screen, but the original novel was actually one of my least favorites of Reid’s books. I didn’t really like Ilya for most of the book, and the ratio of sex to emotions was too high, the sex scenes just got repetitive. The Long Game was much better, because there was more emotional resonance even if it was focused mostly on Ilya. But Reid’s book about Ryan Price and Fabian I liked a lot.
I am here for Tierney’s adaption but there are many better m/m hockey romances (imho). Echoing 100% the recs on Avon Gale’s novels, they are great and the focus on minor league hockey players, just regular guys, is refreshing. I also have really enjoyed Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James (hilarious), AL Heard, Taylor Fitzpatrick (Thrown Off the Ice is a tearjerker), Tal Bauer (Gravity was unashamedly romantic and cheesy), Cait Nairy, and Ari Baran (altho some are too dark for my tastes). Adored EL Massey’s first two m/m hockey books (the opposite of dark). Among others.
I’m just over here squeeing “CANDY!!!!” Carry on.
Your words put this all into the exact right context. I just finished the book, now finished ep. 2 of the show, and I’m blown away by how good the adaptation is. These relatively unknown actors are just killing it with their performances.