If the show sent you here, the answer is yes: Heated Rivalry is based on a book - the second in Rachel Reid's Game Changers series, and the reason your feed is suddenly all hotel rooms and hockey. The Heated Rivalry books in order question has a twist, though: the series is six couples wide but one couple deep, and the pair from the show gets three whole books. Here's the full reading order, the fastest path to more Shane and Ilya, and every date worth circling.
The quick list: Game Changers books in order
Rachel Reid's Game Changers series, in publication order:
- Game Changer (2018)
- Heated Rivalry (2019)
- Tough Guy (2020)
- Common Goal (2020)
- Role Model (2021)
- The Long Game (2022)
- Unrivaled (June 1, 2027)
All seven are MM hockey romance set in the same fictional league. Each book follows a different couple to its own happy ending - except the two men you already know, who refuse to stay in one book.
Is Heated Rivalry based on a book?
Yes - Heated Rivalry (2019) is the second Game Changers novel, and the series everyone means when they say the show is "based on the books." Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are the faces of hockey's most manufactured rivalry and, in private, a secret that runs for the better part of a decade. It's the slowest of burns and the most famous enemies to lovers arc in sports romance - the book people hand you when they say the tension was insane. It anchors our hockey romance shelf for the same reason.
Do you need to read Game Changer first?
No. Every Game Changers book stands alone - new couple, complete arc - and the fandom's honest advice is that you can start exactly where the show did, with Heated Rivalry itself. Game Changer (Scott and Kip) is a warm opener and worth circling back to, but nothing in it is required homework. Reading in publication order just means the cameos land: couples from earlier books keep showing up at each other's games.
The Shane and Ilya trilogy (the fast lane)
If you only care about the pair from the show, their arc runs through three books:
- Heated Rivalry (2019) - the secret decade
- The Long Game (2022) - what happens after the hiding stops
- Unrivaled (June 1, 2027) - announced January 2026, and delayed from its original 2026 date after the show's success upended Reid's schedule and she shared a Parkinson's diagnosis
The middle four books (Tough Guy, Common Goal, Role Model) belong to other couples - skippable on the fast lane, beloved on the slow one. If yearning is the engine you read for, the slow burn shelf runs on the same fuel.
How does the show compare to the books?
Season 1 (Crave in Canada, HBO Max in the US, from creator Jacob Tierney) adapts Heated Rivalry and became the sleeper hit of the winter - a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and one of the platform's most-watched titles. Season 2 is filming now with an April 2027 premiere window, which means the show is about to catch up to The Long Game right as Unrivaled lands in June. The Goodreads series page is the cleanest place to track editions while the tie-in covers roll out.
That timing is the whole reason to read now: the books are the only place the rest of the story already exists.
What to read after Heated Rivalry
More rivals who can't stay rivals: the best enemies to lovers books list runs the arc across every subgenre, and the hockey romance shelf has the genre's other pillars - including Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy, the MM classic most often shelved beside Reid. (Hockey romance is having a screen moment in general: Icebreaker is Netflix-bound - its Maple Hills guide tracks that one - and The Deal is already streaming as Off Campus, mapped in that reading order.) If it's the saga commitment you'll miss, the other reading-order rabbit holes are mapped: From Blood and Ash, Shatter Me, and Ali Hazelwood's backlist.
And if the specific itch is rivalry-shaped - the man who needles you in public and memorizes you in private - Swoony exists for exactly that drop: closed-door, romance-only, a bond that unfolds over five stages and is never paywalled - no subscription, no per-message tolls. Start with the grumpy hockey captain, ruthless on the ice and useless when you smile, or the gym rival who spots you, who counts your reps like a grudge.
The rivalry is fake. The decade wasn't. Read on.
