Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s Heated Rivalry-turned-love story will have to simmer a little bit longer in book form.
Following an initial Sept. 29 publication date set for Unrivaled, the seventh book in the Game Changers series and the third chapter in Shane and Ilya’s arc, author Rachel Reid revealed that the upcoming new novel has been pushed to release June 1, 2027.
Heated Rivalry has been adapted into a television show via Crave and HBO Max, with the first season breaking several records in addition to piercing the zeitgeist. A second season of the hockey-set romance between Hudson Williams’ star Canadian player Hollander and Connor Storrie’s Russian force Rozanov is in the works.
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After a “busy” and “overwhelming” few months, for which Reid expressed immense gratitude, the author cited difficulty getting quality time to write. She also shared that her Parkinson’s symptoms have worsened, making it more difficult for her to physically write.
“When good things happen, sometimes the universe hands you some worse stuff to balance it out,” she said.
She shared the news on Instagram, teasing that the blow will likely be softened with some upcoming announcements later this week.
“There’s nothing more important to me than Unrivaled being the best book it can possibly be,” “The writing is going well. I just wanna make a good book, and I need a little bit more time to do that.”
Other characters core to the television show are Kip Grady (Robbie Graham-Kuntz) and Scott Hunter (François Arnaud), who are central to the first book — Game Changer — in the series and have a few episodes that focus on them in Season 1.
Series creator Jacob Tierney has also teased new characters from the books come Season 2.
“You can’t tell the story without Scott Hunter, you can’t really tell the story without Troy Barrett,” he told The Los Angeles Times.
Barrett’s romance with Harris Drover is prominent in the fifth book of Reid’s series Role Model. Barrett first appears in Tough Guy, the third book, and Common Goal, the fourth.