Heated Rivalry Author Reveals the Biggest Shake-Up in the Show
Canada’s hit Heated Rivalry may be rooted in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers, but it skates off-script with a reimagined first hookup for Shane and Ilya — a bold rewrite the author says was the biggest and most necessary change to make the romance work on TV.
If you read Rachel Reid's Game Changers books and then hit play on the Canadian series Heated Rivalry, you probably clocked one big change right away: Shane and Ilya do not jump into bed as fast on TV as they do on the page. Reid just explained why the show pumped the brakes, and honestly, it tracks for TV pacing.
Why the show slows down Shane and Ilya
"That had to be changed. Their first time having intercourse, the decision was made to move that to the second episode, to not have everything in the first episode. So, because of that, the snowstorm was added to the first episode to delay their meeting. And then the Vegas rooftop happened. And then, yes, two seasons go by where Ilya is just relentlessly texting Shane."
That’s Rachel Reid, talking to TODAY about the decision to keep the leads apart between Episodes 1 and 2. Translation: the writers shifted the first hookup to Episode 2, then built in a snowstorm detour and a Vegas rooftop moment to stretch the timeline. After that, the show jumps ahead two whole seasons, during which Ilya won’t stop texting Shane.
The book vs. the show: what actually changes
- In the books, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov hit it off and start sleeping together pretty much immediately after their first connection.
- On the show, they plan to hook up early… and then a snowstorm wipes out their hockey matchups, and the universe says 'not yet.'
- They end up in a heated party fight, the Vegas rooftop sequence comes into play, and their actual first time gets pushed a full two years down the road.
- Instead of regular in-person meetups like in the novels, the series has them sexting and trading relentless texts across those two skipped seasons.
- The first sex scene lands in Episode 2 rather than the pilot, so the show does not breeze past that milestone offscreen.
Why it makes sense for TV
Reid points out that in the book, by the time that two-season gap would occur, Shane and Ilya have already slept together and are well into their situationship. On television, you can’t just skip their first time and expect everyone to roll with it. She joked that 'Jacob' (someone on the show’s creative side she was chatting with) blamed her for not detailing those two seasons on the page; she fired back that it was his fault for moving the moment to Episode 2. Friendly blame game aside, the change gives the show a clearer on-ramp without burning the biggest beats in the pilot.
How big is this deviation?
Reid calls the delayed first hookup 'probably one of the biggest changes' from her books, and she stresses the series doesn’t make a habit of major departures beyond this. So if you’re worried the adaptation goes off-book everywhere, this one is the outlier — a strategic swap to keep the TV narrative coherent while still paying off the romance properly.
For the record: Shane is played by Hudson Williams, Ilya by Connor Storrie. And yes, the texting is as relentless as advertised.