Is ‘Unrivaled’ the Last Shane & Ilya Book? All About the Future of the Book Series
Thankfully for Heated Rivalry fans everywhere, Rachel Reid isn’t done with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Reid’s beloved hockey-playing couple will return in her forthcoming book Unrivaled, which follows 2019’s Heated Rivalry and 2022’s The Long Game.
Unrivaled will span Shane and Ilya’s first season playing together as a couple. Though they’re enjoying married life, dominating with the Ottawa Centaurs, and receiving a fair amount of public support, they’ll also face backlash, led by a homophobic hockey podcast. But is Unrivaled Shane and Ilya’s final happily ever after?
Keep reading for everything Reid has said about Shane and Ilya’s post-Unrivaled future, as well as the future of the Game Changers series as a whole.
Is Unrivaled the last Shane and Ilya book?
Reid has not definitively stated that Unrivaled is the conclusion to Shane and Ilya’s story. In fact, she’s spoken on multiple occasions about the fact that the fictional couple never leaves her head, including during her Heated Rivalry Deluxe Hardcover Edition book tour during the fall of 2026.
“It’s amazing that they just still… They’re the easiest characters to write for me,” Reid said during her October 13 talk in Toronto, per a fan-recorded video. “They just don’t really stop talking in my head. That might continue forever. I don’t know. I can’t even… ‘Cause usually when I’ve written a book, the characters kind of go away or get a lot quieter, but these guys, never. So, their story is not like… It means their story is not done. So who knows? But I do love writing them so much.”
Several weeks earlier, Reid told Swooon why Ilya and Shane were the only characters so far to have multiple Game Changers books dedicated to them. “Ilya and Shane are different,” the author said. “They’re just… They’re special. They don’t leave my head. They just have more story to be told all the time. So I haven’t felt that way with any of the other characters.”
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Will there be more Game Changers books after Unrivaled?
Reid has also spoken about the future of the Game Changers series as a whole during her August 2026 interview with Swooon, revealing that she didn’t see more books devoted to Game Changer‘s Scott Hunter and Kip Grady, Tough Guy‘s Ryan Price and Fabian Salah, Common Goal‘s Eric Bennett and Kyle Swift, or Role Model‘s Troy Barrett and Harris Drover, though the latter couple will be a primary background couple in Unrivaled, and all will appear in some capacity.
“I don’t know that there’s any couple that I think needs to be expanded further than I’ve already done with them,” Reid said. “I enjoy revisiting them in the background of other people’s stories, but I don’t think there’s a whole book in any other couple.”
However, she added, “There’s some [Game Changers] characters that I think could have a book in them.”
Originally, Reid planned to end the series with its sixth book, The Long Game. Then, she attempted to write a book about Ottawa Centaurs rookie Luca Haas. Reid shared in a blog post that Luca would have had a romance in the aftermath of Shane and Ilya’s outing, while homophobic fan backlash was led by a hockey podcast.
Reid told Swooon that, though she had scrapped the Luca book, she used its conflict in Unrivaled. “As I realized that the conflict was going to be mostly backlash related to what [Shane and Ilya] did, it felt weird for them to not be the main focus of the story,” Reid explained in April 2026. “They shouldn’t be the background characters. And also, as the [Luca] book was going on, it was like they were kind of taking over more and more.”
Reid recently shared during her New York City book tour stop that she’s considering attempting a Luca book again. “I’m not saying never. I tried twice, and it didn’t work. So I do have a new idea. I probably will give it another go,” she said on September 29, per a fan-recorded video.
Though it may not be branded under the Game Changers series, Reid also spoke about her desire to write about women. “I really do wanna write a book about women, and I will,” she promised during a September 9 appearance on the Vibe Check podcast. ‘But that’s not what these books are. I also want to write that [a book about Rose], but I wasn’t sure. I was like, I think movie star romances are pretty common, but so are hockey romances. So I might do it.”
What Game Changers character are you hoping gets a book next? Do you want more of Shane and Ilya’s romance? Sound off in the comments below.
