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Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid is pushing back the release of her next hockey romance novel, citing the time demands of sudden fame and the worsening symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Reid had initially planned to have Unrivaled released this fall, but in a video message posted Tuesday on Instagram said she now expects the book to be delayed to June 2027.
Unrivaled will be the third in her Game Changer series about hockey rivals/secret lovers Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. The first two books, Heated Rivalry and The Long Game, are the basis for the HBO miniseries starring Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie that has become a cultural phenomenon and made Reid a major publishing star.
“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 said on Instagram. “And there’s nothing more important to me than Unrivaled being the best book it can possibly be.”
She then said that “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, so I’m definitely a lot slower,” said Reid. She has said that she initially learned she had Parkinson’s in 2023, around the time director Jacob Tierney contacted her and expressed interest in adapting her work.
Tierney’s adaptation, originally developed for the Canadian streaming service Crave, was the top-rated series on HBO Max in its first season. It has been renewed for a second season.
Author of the bestselling hockey romance novel, Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid answers a round of fan questions. She discusses the experience of seeing her book adapted for the screen, the unexpected fame of the Canadian Olympic fleece jacket, her unique writing process, and the powerful emotional impact of her bestselling Game Changers series.
