Book Reviews

Book 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.

 

Book Review

‘The Long Game’ is the much awaited (at least by me) second part of Shane and Ilya’s story, the one that started in ‘Heated Rivalry’ (book two). ‘Heated Rivalry’ may have ended with a HFN, but there were so many unresolved issues and both Shane and Ilya had not really come to terms with their relationship. As a consequence, the end of that book felt more like a cliff-hanger to me than the “proper” end of a romance. I am really happy the author decided to write ‘The Long Game’ and finally gave Shane and Ilya what they deserved and me what I was looking for.

 

Shane and Ilya have kept their relationship a secret for ten years. TEN YEARS! I am surprised they didn’t develop ulcers or high blood pressure or other effects of long-term stress. Shane is the one who has more issues with coming out publicly, maybe because he is even more ambitiously career-minded than Ilya. Ilya is done with hiding their feelings and, despite the risk of not being signed up again and possibly being deported back to Russia, he is ready to make their relationship public. They are already working together off the ice, much to the astonishment of most, but Ilya’s charity and their hockey training camps are a good “excuse” to be seen spending time together.

 

Both men are captains of their own hockey teams, and the on-ice rivalry is still going strong. The competitiveness at the base of it is probably built into their characters and does not seem to have impacted their romance. But the secrets in their personal lives are getting to them – no wonder after all that time – and even though Shane has all these worries about the consequences of coming out, he understands where Ilya is coming from. It is more like “waiting for the right time” for Shane – but after ten years there must come a breaking point. When it finally arrives, I was cheering from the sidelines. Simply glorious!

 

If you like enemies-to-lovers romances with a true happy ending, if stubborn men who “finally see the light” are your thing, and if you have been waiting for a true HEA for Shane and Ilya, then you will probably like this novel as much as I did. I think I’ll have to reread it fairly soon.

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book was purchased by the reviewer.

 

Additional Information

Format	ebook, print and audio
Length	Novel, 496 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	26-April-2022
Price	$6.99 ebook, $9.98 paperback, $26.69 audio book
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Long-Game-Changers-Book-ebook/dp/B09DW1YSGQ