Well hello there, my beautiful bi bibliophiles! Who doesn’t love a good romantic story? I know bookworms like to complain about typical tropes (enemies-to-lovers, etc.), but I can say as a writer there’s a reason they stick around — they work, and they’re satisfying. The real craft is finding new ways to explore old dynamics while keeping the audience on the edge of their seat. So when I found out that the novel Heated Rivalry is an enemies-to-lovers tale with a high-stakes queer slant, I knew I had to find out whether bisexuality was as important to the plot in the book as it was in the TV adaptation.
Before I get going, I should throw a few clarifications into the “boy aquarium.” There will be SPOILERS in this review for the novel. I’d also like to note that these Bi Book Club reviews are a little different from The Unicorn Scale: there’s no official rating here, but I will explore how bisexuality is covered and let you know if it’s worth reading the book.
Heated Rivalry is a 2019 sports romance-drama written by Canadian author Rachel Reid. It follows two players on rival professional hockey teams: Canadian golden boy Shane Hollander and cocky Russian star Ilya Rozanov. Set up as rivals from the jump, the two strike up an unlikely relationship with each other off the ice — one that soon turns into something more than platonic. But the stakes couldn’t be higher for either of them should anyone find out, which makes things worse as their affair starts to deepen into something more than just exploring each others’ bodies behind closed doors.
What’s interesting about following Ilya throughout the novel is hearing his internal dialogue. Ilya trash talks every chance he gets and outwardly acts as if nothing ever bothers him, but the reader is taken along for the ride as his inner emotional life tells another story, one more complex, sensitive, and emotional. Despite his first encounter with Shane in a Toronto hotel room, the early chapters show that Ilya is attracted to women as well as men. One especially brilliant passage gives a taste of how colorful Rozanov’s inner voice is, when he sees Shane before a press conference months after their first sexual encounter:
He hadn’t even gotten a nod of acknowledgment from [Hollander.] He wondered what he was doing right now. He wondered if there were any cute girls at the hotel bar. Was Hollander in his own room, lying on his bed? […] He loved shit-talking [Hollander], because his eyes would get all squashed up and angrier, and his pink lips would curl up into an adorable little attempt at a snarl, like an angry kitten […]
Ilya had always been this way. He loved sex, and he loved it more when it was dangerous. When it was with someone he knew he shouldn’t be with. Whether it was his coach’s son or his teammate’s sister, Ilya couldn’t resist a bad idea. And Shane Hollander was a really bad idea. Too unimaginable.
The risks involved for Ilya and Shane are considerable. No one in the MLH (the fictional version of the NHL) is openly gay or bi, and the hyper-masculine and often homophobic culture of the sport maintains a huge stigma. In one scene, Ilya and an opponent chirp at each other on the ice. The other player tells him, “Suck my dick, Rozanov.” Ilya claps back, “It’d be the best blow job of your life, sweetheart,” and winks, to which the other player responds by calling him a “faggot.”
Though Ilya may not be open to his teammates or the public about his bisexuality, he does open up to Shane. During one of their more domestic post-intimacy encounters, Shane asked him if he was upset that a woman Ilya used to hook up with was getting married:
‘What? No.’ Rozanov seemed genuinely surprised and maybe amused by his question. ‘Was not like that. Just … convenient to have a reliable woman to sleep with while in New York. With three teams to play against there, we are there a lot.’ […]
Rozanov didn’t reply for a moment. Then he turned back to the television and said, ‘I like girls.’
‘Yeah, no shit.’
‘But I also like you.’
Even as things get more emotionally complicated with Shane as the story progresses, Ilya never backs down on being bi, even while Shane comes to accept himself as a gay man. The fact that Ilya is from Russia also complicates the idea of him ever coming out.
Of course, there is so much more to Ilya’s character than just his bisexuality. Yes, his attraction to and feelings for Shane are very important to the plot. But Ilya is a fully developed character — he is strong, witty, tender, cocksure, great with kids, and has interests outside of Shane, hockey, and sex. Throughout Heated Rivalry, we see his hopes, dreams, and fears when he dares to let himself think about them outside of the pressures he is under. We see him grow as a person, and that growth is not merely about accepting his bisexuality, but about allowing himself to be attracted to and love another man while navigating the vulnerable position that puts him in.
While I really enjoyed the book, I will say I was disappointed in how rarely the term “bi” was used. The word is sprinkled throughout the novel, but Ilya never uses it himself. I know Ilya is trying to cross a language barrier, but it can be frustrating as a reader to see this, since the book mostly takes place in the 2010s and the term was well-known by then.
That said, Heated Rivalry is a fantastic read, with steamy interludes and lots of will-they-won’t-they chemistry. But perhaps the best part of the novel is not only having a three-dimensional bi male lead, but also seeing him find someone who accepts him for who he is, while the two dare to find a way to live and love together under stressful circumstances. And that is a real hat trick for the literary ages.