Clara’s Verdict
Rachel Reid has done something rare with the Game Changers series: she has written a romance in which the sequel is more emotionally resonant than the original. The Long Game, the sixth book in the series and the continuation of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s story that began in Heated Rivalry, is a study in the corrosive cost of secrecy — and what it takes to finally choose openness over safety. Read by Cooper North over nearly thirteen hours, this is the Game Changers instalment that listeners tend to cite as the one that broke them in the best possible way. It broke me too, and I don’t say that lightly.
About the audiobook
Shane and Ilya have been together, secretly, for ten years. To the hockey world they remain rivals; to each other they are everything. The Long Game picks up that relationship at a point of fracture: Shane, devoted to his professional career and terrified of the consequences of coming out, has become an expert at emotional suppression. Ilya, meanwhile, is reaching the end of his patience. He wants their relationship to exist in daylight. He wants to stop pretending.
Reid structures the novel with alternating points of view, but where Heated Rivalry felt balanced between the two men, The Long Game tilts towards Ilya — and this is the right choice. His journey is the emotional engine of the book: a man who is, underneath his brash public persona, deeply vulnerable and genuinely frightened that the person he loves most will never choose him over his career.
The novel deals frankly with the ongoing realities of being a gay man in professional hockey — the fear of press exposure, the calculation of career risk, the loneliness of a relationship that exists only in private spaces. Reid handles these themes with intelligence and avoids both the naive optimism of wish-fulfilment and the fashionable grimness of trauma narratives. This is a book about two complicated people trying to find a way to be brave enough for each other.
The Long Game is part of the Game Changers series, which also inspired the streaming adaptation Heated Rivalry. It functions as a direct sequel to book two and is best read in sequence.
The narration
Cooper North narrates, and his work here is exceptional. He has spent enough time with these characters across the series to have developed genuine vocal distinctiveness for Shane and Ilya — you never lose track of whose interiority you are inhabiting. His delivery of Ilya’s more emotionally exposed moments is particularly strong: there is a quietness to his reading in those scenes that contrasts effectively with the banter and heat elsewhere. At nearly thirteen hours, this is a long audiobook, but North makes every minute of it engaging.
What readers say
UK listeners have been effusive. One reviewer wrote that the book was « everything — give me all the Ilya and Shane content forever » and noted that Ilya’s journey was « so emotional, I absolutely cried at one point. » Another called the entire series « wonderful, addictive and sexy as hell » and praised the fact that the characters « read like real people, real men — complicated, human and brave. » A third described it as picking up « straight from Heated Rivalry, sad in some places and also laugh-out-loud funny. »
The audiobook holds a rating of 4.8 from 43 listeners on Audible UK — an unusually strong score for a series entry.
Who should listen?
Start with Heated Rivalry if you haven’t already — the emotional payoff here depends on having lived through the beginning of Shane and Ilya’s story. For listeners who are already invested in the series, The Long Game is essential. More broadly, this is an audiobook for anyone who enjoys romance with genuine emotional stakes and characters complex enough to frustrate as well as move you. LGBTQ+ romance readers who are tired of narratives that treat queerness as tragedy will find this series a welcome corrective.
Listen to The Long Game on Audible UK — and have a glass of something restorative nearby.
