15 books to read after you’ve binged ‘Heated Rivalry’

Books

For more stories like Shane and Ilya’s, local booksellers recommend slow-burn sports romances and emotionally rich love stories.

Looking for more stories like Shane and Ilya’s from “Heated Rivalry”? These local booksellers have you covered. (Photo collage by Annie Jonas/Boston.com Staff)

By Annie Jonas

January 8, 2026 | 12:23 PM

1 minute to read

If you’ve found yourself utterly consumed by “Heated Rivalry” — the buzzy hockey romance that turned a secret love affair between two rival hockey stars into appointment television — you’re far from alone.

Based on Rachel Reid’s “Game Changers” novels, the show follows Canadian golden boy Shane Hollander of the fictional Montreal Metros and Russian phenom Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Raiders as their on-ice animosity masks a years-long romance shaped by competition, secrecy, and undeniable chemistry.

What makes “Heated Rivalry” resonate so powerfully isn’t just the heat (though there’s plenty of that), but the emotional slow burn underneath. The series explores what it means to fall in love in a hypermasculine, high-stakes sports world — one that rewards toughness and silence over vulnerability. As Shane and Ilya navigate fame and the very real risks of being out in professional hockey, the show balances swoony romance with sharp critiques of the systems surrounding its characters.

For viewers craving more stories like “Heated Rivalry,” booksellers have plenty of recommendations. We reached out to four Boston-area bookstores — Papercuts Bookshop in Jamaica Plain, All She Wrote Books in Somerville, Lovestruck Books in Cambridge, and pop-up bookshop Read My Lips Boston — to ask what they’d recommend to fans who can’t stop thinking about Shane and Ilya. Below, explore their picks for what to read next.

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.

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