Rachel Reid delights fans of one of her most popular romance books by writing a sequel!
Check out my book review of The Long Game to see if I thought this MM, hockey romance is a book worth reading.
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The Long Game
by Rachel Reid
Category: Contemporary Romance, Sports Romance, Gay Romance
Series: Game Changers
Tags: MM, Gay, Hockey, Opposites Attract, Mental Health, Depression
Published April 2022
Amazon | Goodreads
Rating: ★★★★★
Boyfriend Rating: 
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.
I LOVED Heated Rivalry where I first met Shane and Ilya, and found them to be such a compelling couple with a whirlwind romance.
You cannot imagine my excitement to hear that Rachel Reid was giving us another book to continue their story in The Long Game.
And long game is right for these two! We see them again 10 years after their first hook-up their rookie seasons.
They’re now in a committed relationship and living relatively close to one another in Canada but they are still hiding their relationship from most of their friends and the league.
What I Loved
Ilya and Shane are such opposites and strong rivals on the ice that their chemistry together is really off the charts hot.
Even ten years later these guys seriously can’t keep their hands off one another and their level of passion and love has not dimmed for one second. (Relationship goals I tell you!)
Of course, they aren’t without their share of difficulties trying to keep their secret and it’s reaching a tipping point, at least for Ilya.
So rest assured you get A LOT of bedroom shenanigans between these two.
An Important Look at Mental Health
While I love both of these men, Ilya was the real stand-out to me in this one.
Not only do I love how he needles Shane all the time to get a rise out of him, but his snarky humor is just funny.
I love how he connects with his teammates and steps up as the captain to the younger recruits and to a new teammate with his own secret.
The moment he finally shares his feelings with Shane really gutted me and tugged on all of my heartstrings.
But it’s really his struggle with depression, which Reid wrote so beautifully, that really stood out to me in this novel.
I rarely listen to audiobooks because I can read SO much faster but I did listen to this as an audiobook.
While the narrator did a fantastic job, I think it made the story drag a bit in the beginning for me where I was just waiting for the moment of tension when either they were going to be outed or decided to out themselves. But I still loved it!
If you loved Heated Rivalry as much as I do, then you have to read this book!
Book Lists with this Title:
- Best Romance Novels of 2022
- Ultimate Guide to Gay Romance Novels
- The Most Anticipated Romance Books Coming April 2022
Related Book Lists:
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- The Best Enemies to Lovers Books in MM Romance
- Romance Books that Highlight Mental Health
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