Author: Rachel Reid
# of Pages: 453 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: 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.
Review: I honestly don't think this book is particularly better then the other books I enjoyed in this series (Heated Rivalry, Role Model, etc.) but SOME book in this series has to get the coveted 4 stars to show how addicted I am to these Game Changers books.
Here's my justification for the extra star; while ALL of the Game Changers book are DEEPLY hopecore, The Long Game has that underlying feeling of hopelessness and angst that makes the story even more irresistible. Shane and Ilya have already done the formula all the other books have gone through of becoming a couple, which allows this "sequel" to their love story concentrate on other relationship problems (long distance, compromises) as well as broader issues with themselves and those around them (mental health, systemic homophobia/bigotry).
As typical of romance books (and staying on the hopecore theme), The Long Game still has the typical happy ending and wraps up any lingering issues into some (too) easy resolution. But similarly (and actually more so than Heated Rivalry), I thought the ending actually had a good amount of tragedy too. This puts it a step above the endings for the other books in the series; it feels a bit more realistic because not EVERYTHING is just sunshines and roses.
Don't get me wrong; this book is far from perfect. The beginning 1/4-1/2 of the book dragged because of all the story "recap"/overlap with other books (I was worried Reid didn't know how to write an actual romantic sequel without focusing on new characters). It seemed like The Long Game was treated as a reunion episode where EVERY lead character from the previous books gets their time in the lime light.
Since I read all of these books in rapid succession, all the sex scenes sound the same to me and was actually one of my least favorite parts of this book (they kept having sex instead of talking/doing something more plot relevant). All the dirty talk is about the same across all the lead characters of the book (they start slurring and speaking in the same sentence fragments), so it gets really old by book 6.
Once again, shout out to the Heated Rivalry show for making it so easy to imagine and love these characters, even if we are a long ways from the second season.
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