The Long Game by Rachel Reid
The Long Game by Rachel Reid is a heartfelt sports romance that follows Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov as they face the biggest challenge of their relationship: deciding whether their private love can survive in the public world of professional hockey. For ten years, these two celebrated rivals have maintained a secret relationship, carefully separating their careers from the feelings they share away from the spotlight.
Shane is determined to protect everything he has worked for, while Ilya is increasingly unwilling to hide the person who matters most to him. Their different approaches create tension as they confront questions about identity, trust, career pressure, and what it really means to build a future together. Reid combines the excitement of professional hockey with emotionally rich character development, witty dialogue, and a romance that has been developing for years. Familiar faces and connections from the series add extra warmth for returning readers. More than a story about sports or rivalry,
The Long Game is about two people learning that love requires honesty, courage, and compromise. It is an emotional romance about choosing what matters most when the stakes suddenly become personal.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
Key Ideas from the Book
Who Should Read This Book?
Shane is determined to protect everything he has worked for, while Ilya is increasingly unwilling to hide the person who matters most to him. Their different approaches create tension as they confront questions about identity, trust, career pressure, and what it really means to build a future together. Reid combines the excitement of professional hockey with emotionally rich character development, witty dialogue, and a romance that has been developing for years. Familiar faces and connections from the series add extra warmth for returning readers. More than a story about sports or rivalry,
The Long Game is about two people learning that love requires honesty, courage, and compromise. It is an emotional romance about choosing what matters most when the stakes suddenly become personal.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
- Strong emotional connection between the protagonists
- Excellent character development
- Authentic hockey world atmosphere
- Sharp humor and memorable dialogue
- Satisfying long term relationship arc
- Best enjoyed after Heated Rivalry
- The emotional drama can be intense
- Some conflicts develop gradually
- Readers looking for a sports heavy plot may find the relationship more central
Key Ideas from the Book
- Love requires honesty. Keeping an important relationship hidden can protect people temporarily, but it can also create distance and uncertainty.
- A successful life is about more than achievement. Career goals matter, but the story asks what happens when professional success begins competing with personal happiness.
- People grow at different speeds. Shane and Ilya have spent years together, yet they do not always want the same things at the same moment.
- Trust takes vulnerability. A lasting relationship requires the courage to reveal fears, doubts, and hopes rather than hiding behind confidence.
- Rivalry does not cancel affection. Competition can coexist with deep respect and connection, creating a relationship that is complicated but compelling.
- Choosing your own future takes courage. The characters gradually learn that other people's expectations cannot completely determine the lives they want to build.
Who Should Read This Book?
- Fans of Rachel Reid and the Game Changers series
- Readers who enjoy sports romance and professional hockey fiction
- Fans of rivals to lovers and long term romance arcs
- Readers who prefer romance with humor and emotional depth
- Anyone looking for a story about love, trust, identity, career pressure, and personal growth
Home → LGBTQ+ Books → The Long Game by Rachel Reid
Series and reading order
The Long Game is Book 6 of Rachel Reid's Game Changers series, but its essential predecessor is Book 2, Heated Rivalry. That novel establishes Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov's private relationship; this one returns to them after ten years of secrecy. Starting here would reveal the outcome of the earlier romance while removing much of the emotional history behind their choices.
What changes when the rivalry lasts
To hockey fans, Shane and Ilya are still opposing stars. In private, they have built a relationship that depends on hiding in plain sight. Shane sees secrecy as protection for their careers and public identities. Ilya increasingly experiences the same secrecy as proof that their shared life has limits.
The central tension is not whether attraction will become love it already has. The question is whether a relationship can remain healthy when the strategy that once kept it safe begins to isolate one partner from the other. Hockey supplies the public pressure, but the difficult decisions concern visibility, compromise, mental health, and the kind of future each man is willing to claim.
Best for / skip if
For readers seeking an established couple sports romance, The Long Game focuses on what happens after the rivals to lovers breakthrough: maintaining intimacy, negotiating unequal comfort with disclosure, and deciding whether professional success is worth continued concealment.
Skip it for now if you have not read Heated Rivalry, or if you want a romance driven mainly by games and locker room competition. The relationship and its accumulated emotional pressure are the main event.
Book club questions
Read next on Pippla
The Last Buzzer - for another hockey romance shaped by vulnerability and mental health pressure, with coaching, guardianship, and found family at its center.
Star Shipped - for a queer rivals to lovers story about public performance, forced appearances, and learning to see the person behind a professional persona.
Consequences of Normal - for a family centered exploration of identity, visibility, and the cost of conforming to a community's expectations rather than a sports romance.
Updated September 27, 2026
Series and reading order
The Long Game is Book 6 of Rachel Reid's Game Changers series, but its essential predecessor is Book 2, Heated Rivalry. That novel establishes Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov's private relationship; this one returns to them after ten years of secrecy. Starting here would reveal the outcome of the earlier romance while removing much of the emotional history behind their choices.
What changes when the rivalry lasts
To hockey fans, Shane and Ilya are still opposing stars. In private, they have built a relationship that depends on hiding in plain sight. Shane sees secrecy as protection for their careers and public identities. Ilya increasingly experiences the same secrecy as proof that their shared life has limits.
The central tension is not whether attraction will become love it already has. The question is whether a relationship can remain healthy when the strategy that once kept it safe begins to isolate one partner from the other. Hockey supplies the public pressure, but the difficult decisions concern visibility, compromise, mental health, and the kind of future each man is willing to claim.
Best for / skip if
For readers seeking an established couple sports romance, The Long Game focuses on what happens after the rivals to lovers breakthrough: maintaining intimacy, negotiating unequal comfort with disclosure, and deciding whether professional success is worth continued concealment.
Skip it for now if you have not read Heated Rivalry, or if you want a romance driven mainly by games and locker room competition. The relationship and its accumulated emotional pressure are the main event.
Book club questions
- When does secrecy function as protection, and when does it become a form of distance?
- Do Shane and Ilya face the same professional risk, or do they understand risk differently because of personality and experience?
- Which compromises preserve a shared future, and which ask one partner to become smaller?
Read next on Pippla
The Last Buzzer - for another hockey romance shaped by vulnerability and mental health pressure, with coaching, guardianship, and found family at its center.
Star Shipped - for a queer rivals to lovers story about public performance, forced appearances, and learning to see the person behind a professional persona.
Consequences of Normal - for a family centered exploration of identity, visibility, and the cost of conforming to a community's expectations rather than a sports romance.
Updated September 27, 2026
