Unrivaled, the next novel by Rachel Reid, has been moved to 2027, the author said Tuesday.
Reid, the New York Times best-selling author of Heated Rivalry, announced earlier this year that she’s releasing the seventh book in her Game Changers series. The book series serves as the source material of the wildly popular Crave-HBO Max, Heated Rivalry.
In a video posted to Instagram, Reid explained Unrivaled would need to move to June 2027 from its original September 2026 release date. The Canadian author started by sharing her gratitude for the last few months. “I can’t really put into words what any of this feels like for an author,” Reid said in the video.
“My life has gotten very different in the last couple months, and although it’s all good, it’s also taken away my ability to have quality time to write,” she added. “There’s nothing more important to me than Unrivaled being the best book it can possibly be.”
Reid has been open about being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “I think when good things happen, sometimes the universe hands you some worse stuff to balance it out. For me, that’s been that my Parkinson’s symptoms have gotten a bit worse, and it’s made it difficult physically to write,” she said.
“I’m definitely a lot slower. And that’s just something I need to learn how to navigate and kind of face instead of ignoring,” Reid added. The author said to fans in the video that she hopes it’s not too much of a wait. Comments under Reid’s post reassured the author that everyone is fine with waiting a bit longer.
Reid reassured fans that she’s excited about the book. “Ultimately, it’s gonna be a much better book and that’s the most important thing to me. It’ll be better for the readers, and it’ll be better for the characters,” she said. The author also teased some announcements that fans have been waiting for later this week that’ll hopefully “soften the blow” of Unrivaled being pushed.
Unrivaled will be a sequel to Heated Rivalry and The Long Game, which both focus on hockey players Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, rival professional players turned lovers (sorry, Shane).
Spoiler alert for any show-only fans ahead, but Unrivaled will pick up following the events of Heated Rivalry’s sequel The Long Game, which found Shane and Ilya, earnestly in a relationship, dealing with their relationship becoming public, their marriage and the news that Shane would be joining Ilya on his hometown team, the Ottawa Centaurs.
“For the first time in their professional hockey careers, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander have nothing to hide. For more than a decade, they kept their love a secret, but now they’re out, married and even playing on the same team. The support is incredible. Most of the time,” the book’s official synopsis reads.
The synopsis continues: “They’ve gotten a lot of love from fans who are thrilled for them. But some people in the hockey world are still reeling from their relationship reveal, and the backlash — led by popular hockey podcast Top Shelf and the #TakeBackHockey movement — is getting louder. Ilya and Shane are finally able to stand together in the light, the way they’d always wanted. And now they might be facing their biggest challenge yet.”
Reid’s novels received a massive bump in popularity following the released of Heated Rivalry, the Crave-produced series, which airs on HBO Max in the U.S. Heated Rivalry and The Long Game recently became New York Times best sellers, several years after their initial publication. Game Changers, the first book in the series, was featured during episode three of the series.
Crave renewed Heated Rivalry, starring Hudson Williams as Shane and Connor Storrie as Ilya, for a second season, and HBO Max confirmed it will continue to air the series. Tierney, who wrote and directed the show’s entire first season, has confirmed that he’ll return to direct the series, but told THR ahead of Heated Rivalry’s finale that he was considering the possibility “that other writers will come in to help” him out but that he wasn’t sure yet.
