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book notes
title: The Long Gameauthor: Rachel Reid
series: Game Changers #6
published: 5.26.2022
publisher: Carina Press
Source: bought
genre(s): lgbtqia+, romance, sports
pages: 447
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | BookBub | BookHype | StoryGraph | Goodreads
rating:
| series rating: the blurb
To the world they are rivals, but to each other they are everything.
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.
a few notes
❗trigger warnings: ❗depression. mentions of suicide
POV: 3rd person
setting: Canada
keywords/phrases: hockey, homophobia, choices
tropes: misunderstandings, love conquers all
spice: 5/5
language: 5/5
mood reading: in the mood for a deeply emotional read.
my review
This one was incredibly heart-wrenching at times, with moments of light-heartedness, too. It is beautifully written, taking this series to the next level.
Ilya’s character is so complex, shown in ways we haven’t really seen as much of in the previous books. There is a softness to him, a vulnerability, that is utterly engrossing. There are some very intense scenes with him as he struggles with issues that have plagued him for a long time. The pain he feels, and the helplessness Shane feels at times, leaps off the page. It is a delicate balance between the intensity of his issues and his characteristic humor.
My only real issue was with how the forced coming-out was presented. I don’t have a problem with it being forced, as this is something, unfortunately, that happens. But this is book 6, and with each of the four non-Shayla books, each couple had a largely positive experience with their coming-out. So the unceasing level of fear of the fallout of their coming-out seemed a little odd, even before the forced aspect. The absolute certainty that their coming-out would be so much worse felt out of proportion with the precedent set by the previous books. Conversely, while I loved the positive reactions in the previous books, I can’t help but feel that they were viewed through rose-colored glasses.
All in all, this is a great book that brings back fan-favorites Shane and Ilya. I hope future books will have more of them!!
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2026 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge
- 2026 Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge
- 2026 Beyond the Bookends Reading Challenge
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