Game Changers Volume 2

De: Rachel Reid

Narrado por: Cooper North

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A #1 STREAMING SHOW

The epic enemies-to-lovers hockey romance from Rachel Reid, streaming on Crave in Canada and on HBO Max in the U.S.

"The book that got me into hockey romance." —NPR's Weekend Edition on Heated Rivalry

The next three scorching MM hockey romances in the Game Changers series, now in one volume!

Common Goal

Veteran goaltender Eric Bennett is facing down his toughest challenge yet—life after hockey. It’s time to make some big changes, starting with finally dating men for the first time. Graduate student Kyle Swift moved to New York nursing a broken heart and swearing to find someone his own age (for once). Until he meets a gorgeous, distinguished silver fox hockey player.

Kyle has no intention of getting emotionally involved. He’ll teach Eric a few tricks, have some mutually consensual fun, then walk away. Neither expected their friends-with-benefits arrangement to leave them wanting more. Everything they both want is within reach, they just have to be brave enough to grab it.

Role Model

Troy just wants to play hockey and be left alone. He doesn’t want to be in the news anymore, and he definitely doesn’t want to “work on his online presence” with the team’s peppy social media manager. Harris Drover can tell standoffish Troy isn’t happy about being traded to the worst team in the league, but Harris doesn’t give up on people easily.

When he sees Troy’s smile finally crack through his grumpy exterior, well… That’s a man Harris couldn’t turn his back on if he wanted to. Indulging in each other behind closed doors is one thing, but for Troy, being in a public relationship with Harris will mean facing off his fears, once and for all.

The Long Game

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov have been seeing each other for ten years and have kept it 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? But Ilya is sick of secrets. Shane has gotten so good at hiding his feelings, sometimes Ilya questions if they even exist.

It’s time for them to make the call and decide what’s most important—hockey or love.

Game Changers

• Book 1: Game Changer
• Book 2: Heated Rivalry
• Book 3: Tough Guy
• Book 4: Common Goal
• Book 5: Role Model
• Book 6: The Long Game

Need more Reid?! Check out these other standalones from your favorite MM hockey romance writer:

• Time to Shine
• The Shots You Take

LG Review - A Story That Completely Destroys Me (In the Best Way)

There really aren’t proper words to describe what this book did to me. I was sobbing—happy sobbing, sad sobbing, angry sobbing, hurt sobbing. This story is one emotional punch after another, and I loved every single moment of it.

Ilya will forever be one of my favorite MMCs of all time. Always. The book manages to wrap up so much while still leaving so many possibilities open, which felt exactly right for their story.

Update: I loved this the first time I read it, but after finishing the Heated Rivalry season one show, I immediately had to reread it—and somehow it was even better the second time. I love their story. I love them.

The last 3 are the best of the series

I genuinely LOVE all these characters it was so hard to find a favorite but I found myself loving the last 3 books the best. The spicy scenes were told better and more spicy 🥵

Beautiful Series

My highlight books are the Rivalry and The Long Game. Ilya and Shane are an awesome couple. Beautiful writing Rachel, Great narrators in this series too. They make them live.

I'm not crying you are crying 😭

These bois are so wonderful and please protect them at all costs.

Suffer through Common Goal for the real prizes!

Like it's similarly off balance counterpart, Tough Guy, the elements for Common Goal exist, but it quickly establishes itself as a meandering, one note story. Eric is 41. The end. Along the way we learn he is bisexual and attracted to a younger man. But all roads lead back to Eric is 41. Tiresome from the get go, there are none of the truly human concerns that we saw in Game Changer or Heated Rivalry. This book instead is an occasional sexploration, mainly hand wringing over being 41. I found it hard to complete.

Fortunately, the follow up is Role Model - a story that starts out suggesting it could be in line with its predecessor, but it quickly gels. We see people like Troy in real life. People who are deeply closeted, clinging to virulently homophobic, misogynstic people and politics to divert attention from themselves. We met a very cardboard version of Troy in Tough Guy. The Troy we meet in Role Model is own a par with Scott Hunter in that he is someone who can't continue live as he have been living. Similar to Hunter, Troy doesn't know where to begin, his life has been turned upside down, and he feels truly alone in a place he doesn't want to be. Harris is a great option, happily happy with life, he has more substance than we are initially led to believe. What I think we love about the first two books in the series, we get here - we can see ourselves in these people and we see them actually grow.

Then there is was is supposed to be the big kahuna. There is a lot to love in The Long Game. Shane is a thoughtfully developed character, but he wasn't written to have the same emotional capacity as Ilya. We dig deeper into Ilya's early life, and we also see the how he still struggles with his mental health. I wish the book had been tightened, At nearly 13 hours, there are moments that feel like filler. Needing to be tighter, this book does bring us closer to Ilya - a huge plus. TLG still falls a bit short of the first two books of the series.

Mercifully Cooper North takes over the narration for these books, bringing a much needed ability to create characters.

This collection is worthwhile to get the Role Model and The Long Game for a single credit. I find Common Goal essentially unnecessary, and you don't need it for the other two books. Highly Recommended.