Heated Rivalry

(by Rachel Reid)

OK, this one was more my speed than Game Changer was. And I mean, I liked Game Changer, but I feel like Scott and Kip both have such golden retriever energy. Like, so earnest and eager and wholesome. And that’s fun and all, but the Shane/Ilya dynamic of rivals who hook up + oops this was supposed to just be physical and then everybody caught feelings hits more for me: the obsessiveness of it, the way they both keep thinking they’ll end it, the way they keep coming back to one another for years. (Tangentially, I’ve been listening to Charli XCX’s Wuthering Heights album a whole lot lately, and this book kept making me think of this song.)

I will refrain from plot summary because at this point you probably know the plot. I do like the structure of this one, how it starts in 2016 and you quickly learn that Shane and Ilya have been hooking up for more than half a decade at this point, and how then the narrative jumps back to the first time they met and moves forward from there.