Light spoilers for the first six Game Changers books ahead. Like most of the internet, we at Marie Claire cannot stop thinking about Heated Rivalry. The Crave/HBO Max series and global phenomenon follows the romance between Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), two professional hockey players who secretly fall in love as their on-ice rivalry becomes the stuff of sports legend. The show's first season was such an instant word-of-mouth hit in December 2025 that a second season is already in the works.
Of course, before it was an acclaimed TV series, Heated Rivalry first came to life as a novel, written by Canadian author Rachel Reid. Shane and Ilya's love story is the second book in Reid's Game Changers series, which features standalone books following different gay couples in the world of hockey. Though the Heated Rivalry duo are the novel queer series' most beloved characters—as evident by the fact that they're the only couple with a sequel novel—anyone looking for their next hockey-romance obsession will likely find a new fave couple among the rest of the series.
