Rachel Reid, the unassuming author of ‘Heated Rivalry’ whose universe has taken on a life of its own

Rachel Reid, 46, had such low expectations for her first novel, Game Changer, that when she sent the final manuscript to the publisher — Harlequin — she didn’t even tell her husband or her parents. She only confessed what she had shortly before it was published in 2018. “I was so self-conscious about people reading what I wrote at all, but especially people that I knew reading what I wrote. I mean, I guess part of that is just the nature of what I write. It’s, you know, it’s sexually explicit fiction and romance and all sorts of things that people might have strong opinions about or be a little shocked by,” she told The Walrus in January.

Before the end of 2025, the Game Changers series — six books in total — had sold more than 650,000 copies, and Reid’s initial embarrassment had turned into pride. “It did take a while, but I’ve become more and more comfortable over the years talking about what I write. I guess I’ve had more and more people tell me that they like it. It makes it easier, of course.”

As if queer erotic fiction weren’t already a niche genre, Reid’s books belong to a subgenre known as hockey smut, focused exclusively on intimate relationships between hockey players. Even so, she has managed to turn her work into a mass phenomenon, one that gained decisive momentum with the series based on the plot of her second book, Heated Rivalry (2019). It premiered in Canada on November 28 and HBO quickly acquired the rights to air it in the United States, Australia, and Latin America.

“It’s really quite the trip when your favorite thing gets discovered by the world,” confessed a Montreal bookseller in a profile about Reid published in The New York Times in December.

The book and the television adaptation — which tell the story of the impossible romance between Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, two hockey stars who, as the synopsis puts it, “Publicly, they’re enemies. Privately, they can’t stop touching each other” — have completely changed Reid’s life. “Usually my level of visibility is almost none. It’s been very weird and overwhelming and amazing but kind of still really hard to believe,” she told The Walrus.

What surprises her most is the newfound prestige she’s suddenly granted as a writer, and how she is now invited to “a lot of events” for “bigger authors.” “Before, it’d be more like a ‘Would you like to come to this convention? It costs $500 for a table’ kind of thing. And now it’s ‘We would like to fly you here and put you up in a hotel and pay you,’” she said. “I was put in the Four Seasons in Toronto for the premiere, and I felt like a hick, like I don’t belong here. And they had these maple toffees, and I was dumping them in my purse every day. Because I was like, I mean, free toffee!”

Rachel Reid’s success is spreading to everything connected to her universe. The stars of Heated Rivalry, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, were complete unknowns until this opportunity came along. Now they’ve gone from waiting tables to presenting an award at the Golden Globes and carrying the Olympic torch at the Milan–Cortina Winter Games. Reid’s publisher didn’t expect this outcome either. “Since its Nov. 28 debut, fans have gone back to devour the books [...] outpacing supply and forcing Harlequin, the publisher, to play catch-up,” The New York Times noted in its profile.

HarperCollins, the main publishing arm of News Corp, holds the rights to the series, and in its latest quarterly earnings report on February 5, it revealed that revenue had surged 6%, reaching a new record of $633 million. “The core creative value of our books was highlighted by the continuing success of our Wicked collection and the stunning sales of Heated Rivalry, which inspired the steamy streaming series,” said News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson.

Years ago, as Reid told The New York Times, she explained to her two children that it was unlikely her books would ever appear on the prestigious bestseller list of the American newspaper — especially since they rarely showed up in physical bookstores. She had started out by anonymously posting the chapters on the fan fiction platform Archive of Our Own, adapting her characters from the Marvel universe.

And yet, Heated Rivalry is now a bestseller, and it has spent nine consecutive weeks near the top of the list. “It’s been surreal. I’m very, very lucky,” she said. In addition to the six‑book series, she has two other published stories, and on January 12 she told People that she is working on a new installment of Game Changers.

Until recently, the Canadian author had her personal email address listed on her website because she barely received any messages. Now she’s had to hire a publicist to manage it because she can’t keep up. “Things like a Rolling Stone interview request had gotten buried in my inbox. And I was like, ‘See, that shouldn’t get buried.’ [...] It’s not like a one-person job anymore, I guess, being me,” she told The Walrus. On her website she describes herself as a “New York Times bestselling author,” but she also reminds readers, in the third person, that “she lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has always lived there, and it’s looking like she probably always will.”

Professional recognition arrived almost at the same time as a devastating piece of personal news. In 2023, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, just as director Jacob Tierney reached out to her to propose directing the television adaptation of her book. “Hearing the words is a lot,” she told The New York Times.

She wrote her latest novel, The Shots You Take, in the months that followed — another love story between former hockey teammates, but with a more melancholic tone than her previous works. “It’s making it hard to write because I can barely control a mouse. I can’t type for very long. It’s hard for me to sit in a chair for very long. I need to figure out new ways to write. I don’t know if that will be voice to text. I don’t know if I can write that way. It doesn’t feel natural, but I need to figure out something because it is taking me a very long time to write now,” she told Variety in an interview at the end of December.

Success hasn’t — at least not yet — brought overwhelming fame. Reid gives interviews and gets invited to events, but her face, unlike those of the stars of the series — on which she worked as a producer — remains unknown to most people. Even so, while staying in the background, the erotic books she was once embarrassed by keep bringing her pleasant surprises.

“Jacob [Tierney] was on CNN a few weeks ago. For whatever reason, the interviewer asked him about my Parkinson’s diagnosis. I thought it was kind of odd, but then the next day, one of the top Parkinson’s experts in the world reached out to me and asked if he could help me,” she said. “I’ve been on a five-year waiting list here because I live in a very small place. Now he’s found me a Parkinson’s expert, a neurologist, and I have an appointment in a couple weeks.”

“He also told me how to change my medication so I can sleep because I never slept. That change made me sleep through the night, which really helps with writing,” she added.

She has “two boring university degrees,” as she puts it on her website, but she doesn’t even specify which ones anymore because she no longer cares; she is finally the respected writer she never thought she would become.

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