Rachel Reid Reading Order

Rachel Reid is the pen name of Rachelle Goguen, born September 2, 1980, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where she still lives with her family in Bedford, Nova Scotia. The pen name comes from her married surname — she married Matt Reid in 2008. A lifelong hockey fan who played ice hockey as a teenager, Goguen brings a degree of sporting authenticity to her fiction that is immediately apparent to readers who know the game: the locker-room culture, the physical demands of the NHL schedule, the particular psychology of professional athletes, and the geographic intensity of hockey rivalries all feel lived-in rather than researched from a distance. She began writing fiction in 2012 and published the Game Changers series through Carina Press, an imprint of Harlequin.

The Game Changers series launched in October 2018 with Game Changer, introducing the fictional world of NHL players navigating professional hockey and their personal lives in a universe where gay relationships are possible — if still not fully accepted by hockey's culture. The second book, Heated Rivalry (2019), became the fan favourite that defined Reid's reputation: a rivals-to-lovers story following Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, star players on rival teams (Montreal and Boston) who have been conducting a secret long-distance relationship for years while maintaining a fierce public on-ice rivalry. Reid has acknowledged drawing inspiration from the real Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin rivalry, as well as other legendary international players, for the emotional architecture of the Shane-Ilya dynamic. Subsequent books — Tough Guy, Common Goal (both 2020), Role Model (2021), The Long Game (2022), and the standalone Time to Shine (2023) — expanded the series universe while each following a new pairing. A seventh Game Changers novel, Unrivaled, is forthcoming in 2027.

Reid became a New York Times bestselling author in 2021, and her profile expanded dramatically when Heated Rivalry was adapted for television. The series premiered on November 28, 2025, simultaneously on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the United States and Australia. Created, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney, the six-episode first season starred Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov. Critical reception was exceptional: the show holds a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New TV Series, and became Crave's most-watched original series. A perfect 10/10 rating on IMDb for Episode 5 briefly made it one of the highest-rated individual television episodes on the platform. The show's success drove the source novel back into Canada's top-ten fiction bestsellers during the streaming release window, and a second season — adapting The Long Game — has been greenlit for spring 2027.

The broader cultural significance of Reid's work lies in her role in bringing M/M romance — fiction centring romantic and sexual relationships between men — to mainstream readership. The genre had long existed within LGBTQ+ romance publishing, but the Game Changers series, amplified by BookTok and Bookstagram from 2020 onwards, became one of the primary entry points for readers coming from straight contemporary romance. The hockey setting — cinematic, physically intense, culturally familiar — lowered the barrier for readers who might not have sought out M/M fiction directly. Reid's stated motivation for the series was frustration with real hockey culture: 'Game Changer came from a place of me being angry at hockey culture and how clearly homophobic it was and is.' The books critique that culture while simultaneously celebrating the sport itself, threading a needle that earns her both sports-romance and M/M romance audiences simultaneously.

Reid writes with warmth, humour, and a gift for slow-burn romantic tension. Her books are emotionally driven rather than plot-driven — the Game Changers universe is built around recurring characters and an accumulating found-family dynamic across the series, so that returning readers watch relationships develop, deepen, and change over multiple books. In August 2023, Reid publicly disclosed that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. She has continued writing and has been transparent about her health on social media, where she is known for wit, directness, and genuine engagement with her readership. She has two children.