{"id":933254,"date":"2026-10-14T23:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T23:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/933254\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T23:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T23:12:14","slug":"heated-rivalry-author-rachel-reid-reflects-on-nova-scotia-pressure-of-overnight-fame-at-massey-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/933254\/","title":{"rendered":"Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid reflects on Nova Scotia, pressure of overnight fame at Massey Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid appeared on stage at Massey Hall in a Q&A with CBC\u2019s Mattea Roach to discuss Heated Rivalry\u2019s new collector\u2019s edition.Jag Gundu\/Supplied<\/p>\n

On Tuesday evening, fans of Heated Rivalry \u2013 the book by Rachel Reid and the hit TV adaptation by Jacob Tierney \u2013 swarmed Massey Hall in Toronto. They wore jerseys inspired by their favourite fictional hockey players; they clutched new special editions of Reid\u2019s bestselling novel, the edges of their pages sprayed with gold glitter.<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to Reid\u2019s Q&A with CBC\u2019s Mattea Roach, the 2,534-person crowd was positively buzzing. And who could blame them? Now\u2019s a great time to be a fan of Heated Rivalry: Filming of the show\u2019s second season is well under way<\/a>, and Reid\u2019s next book in her Game Changers series, Unrivaled, is set to be published in June. <\/p>\n

Reid started the night by underlining that she couldn\u2019t share anything about the next book or the show\u2019s second season. Roach, best known as the most successful Canadian to appear on Jeopardy!, pivoted quickly to HarperCollins\u2019s new collector\u2019s edition of Heated Rivalry, printed in hardcover with full-colour character art and a stamped foil cover \u2013 a far cry from Heated Rivalry\u2019s earlier paperback editions.<\/p>\n

Rachel Reid\u2019s wild Heated Rivalry ride<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly never expected to have a hardcover of this book when I first submitted it to publishers,\u201d said Reid. \u201cI never thought of the move beyond e-books, so I was quite thrilled the first time I got an audiobook, then the mass market paperback and the trade paperback. . .I just think it\u2019s nice that people are so into tangible books again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid published Game Changer, the first book in the eponymous series, in 2018, at a time when there was \u201csome stigma\u201d around reading romance books in public. \u201cRomance was very much an e-book genre when I started publishing, and I thought it would just stay there,\u201d she said. But during the pandemic, romance readership exploded, and Reid\u2019s work experienced a sizable bump in popularity \u2013 though nothing could have prepared her for the success of Tierney\u2019s TV adaptation, which made Heated Rivalry all but a household name.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be tough to convince myself back then that any of this is real,\u201d Reid said, adding that in the early stages of her career she had to learn how to talk about her books outside the \u201csafe bubble\u201d of the romance world. \u201cI didn\u2019t like explaining what I wrote or why to people who didn\u2019t want to understand.\u201d That\u2019s changed in the last year, she said, thanks to the show\u2019s extraordinarily positive reception.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Why Canada needs to produce more shows like Heated Rivalry<\/a><\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

HarperCollins\u2019s new collector\u2019s edition of Heated Rivalry, left, printed in hardcover with full-colour character art and a stamped foil cover is a far cry from Heated Rivalry\u2019s earlier paperback editions.Jag Gundu\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Much of Tuesday\u2019s conversation focused squarely on hockey \u2013 and Nova Scotia, the shared home province of Reid and Roach. \u201cI feel like all of my characters are secretly Nova Scotian,\u201d said Reid, laughing. One of her quirks as a writer, she said, is her highly regional sense of grammar and idioms: When writing Heated Rivalry, for instance, she had to explain to her American editor what Canadian hockey star Shane Hollander meant when discussing \u201cgoing to the cottage.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cMy mushy, terrible Nova Scotia grammar leaks in at times,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

To that end, Reid has no plans of leaving her home in Halifax, even as work obligations increasingly pull her to Ontario and the U.S. \u2013 earlier this month she appeared in New York to support the Irina Foundation<\/a>, a new fund launched by Heated Rivalry production company Accent Aigu Entertainment to promote mental well-being and inclusivity through organized sports and arts programs.<\/p>\n

Heated Rivalry\u2019s creators on why their horny hockey hit scores with both women and gay men<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never lived anywhere else, so it\u2019s a comfort thing,\u201d said Reid of Nova Scotia. \u201cAfter I do things like this, it\u2019s quiet, and life feels very normal there. People are so proud, and they\u2019re really excited for me, which is really nice. I think the pace of life there suits me. I do feel sometimes that I\u2019m missing out on things by not living in Toronto. . .maybe I\u2019ll split my time some day. But I can\u2019t imagine ever not having my home base in Nova Scotia.\u201d<\/p>\n

After some prodding, Reid revealed herself to be a fan of the Montreal Canadiens, and dug into the occasionally ugly complexities of Canadian hockey culture, encouraging fans to read Rick Westhead\u2019s We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada\u2019s Troubled Hockey Culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you read that book, you\u2019ll see I go very easy on hockey culture in my books,\u201d she said. (A number of her characters are forced to contend with leaguewide homophobia over the course of the Game Changers series.) \u201cThat was kind of why I wanted to write hockey romance at all. It was to explore the more toxic elements of hockey culture, and I thought a romance would be a good way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Girlfriend of Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams accuses fans of \u2018uncomfortable\u2019 behaviour<\/a><\/p>\n

In a slight teaser for Heated Rivalry\u2019s second season \u2013 and Unrivaled \u2013 Reid revealed that the last year has shown her firsthand how it feels to be famous. That learning curve, she said, has informed the arcs of Shane and Russian hockey star Ilya Rozanov as they navigate life in the public eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are characters who are famous, who are being watched, who people have opinions about, and whose lives change very suddenly,\u201d she explained. \u201cI can relate to that.\u201d Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, who play Ilya and Shane on the show, have experienced a similarly fast rise to prominence. <\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, they were two unknown actors playing very famous hockey players,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re now way more famous than those hockey players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid appeared on stage at Massey Hall in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-933254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}