Book Review: The Long Game by Rachel Reid

Official Synopsis: Ten years.

That’s how long Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov have been seeing each other. How long they’ve been keeping their relationship a secret. From friends, from family…from the league. If Shane wants to stay at the top of his game, what he and Ilya share has to remain secret. He loves Ilya, but what if going public ruins everything?

Ilya is sick of secrets. Shane has gotten so good at hiding his feelings, sometimes Ilya questions if they even exist. The closeness, the intimacy, even the risk that would come with being open about their relationship…Ilya wants it all.

It’s time for them to decide what’s most important—hockey or love.

It’s time to make a call.

Okay, so it took me...entirely too long to read these books and I'll admit I read them a bit out of order, starting with Shane and Ilya's books (2 and 6) then now reading the first one. (oops, it's not my fault, I wanted to watch the show like the rest of the internet.) That being said, if you haven't read Heated Rivalry specifically, there will most likely be some spoilers, since this book takes place after, but I promise there is a reason this is the one I chose to write a full review about and you'll see that later.

In Heated Rivalry, we get to see the ins and outs of Shane and Ilya spending ten years only seeing each other a few times a years as they also experience their first few years in the NHL. We see how they are painted as each other's rivals, and how they handle that along with their budding feelings and the fact that coming out could be a disaster for both of their careers. When they see a fellow NHL player, Scott Hunter, go and kiss his boyfriend after winning the Stanley Cup, they start to wonder if hiding is the right idea. The Long Game starts at year 10 and is told from pretty much the moment Heated Rivalry ends into what is happening now.

Shane and Ilya are spending time driving between Montreal and Ottawa, or longing for each other while the other is on long road trips. Only a handful of people know their secret, but as we learn, they are mostly Shane's friends and family. In this book we get to see the true extent of how the secret of their relationship is starting to weigh on them, especially Ilya.

In Heated Rivalry, we learn that Ilya doesn't really mesh with his own family, and after his father passes away he is determined to not return to Russia. He also goes from playing for Boston, a top tier team, to playing for Ottawa, who has been struggling for years. He does this specifically to be closer to Shane and Shane's family, but no one else in the world around them understands that move. As the boys continue to be apart, we see how Ilya starts to struggle with the secret, as well as feeling like he has no one to talk to, when he finds a therapist who also speaks Russian, we get to see him open up on how dark everything feels for him. As the reader, we get a deep dive into the struggles that Ilya is facing, how he is happy and supports Shane, but just feels...alone.

As more players start to come out, specifically one on Ottawa, Ilya starts to wonder if it's time for him to do it too, since Shane is the only one in their relationship 'out' to the league/world. The issue is, the more players start speaking out about issues with homophobia and sexual assault, the more the commissioner of the league is hoping for them to stop talking. (shocked). When Ilya final starts to gain the confidence to talk to Shane, who has always been one to follow the rules and expectations of the league, they realize this might be harder than they thought.

When it turns out they are accidentally caught on video kissing, in a way that can't be denied, they are thrown into figuring out what their new life might look like. We get to see the support of Ilya's team, as well as the lack of support from Shane's. We also get to see how each boy handles the news, and the comfort they are given once they find people to talk to.

Overall, I became quickly obsessed with these two idiots after reading Heated Rivalry, but something about this book completely elevated their story for me. The first book spends a lot of time showing how little they saw each other before moving into 'lets have this be real and we'll figure it out' and now we get the older, more mature version of Ilya and Shane and get to see where their priorities are shifting as the world around them shifts too. We get to see the toll it takes on them, especially Ilya, and of course still get to see them be little idiots at times.

Honestly, I fell pretty hard for this series and I'm excited to read the other books now. It was nice seeing how each character shows up in all the other books, and I'm super excited to see that a series like this was developed into a TV show.

I rated The Long Game 5 out of 5 stars!

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