Everyone, it seems, is angling for an invite to the cottage. Not a real one, but the cottage, the one that has become Internet shorthand for queer romance done right. If you have been anywhere near pop culture lately, you know exactly what I mean. And even if you have not watched Heated Rivalry — which, to be clear, is not officially streaming in India — the idea of the cottage has travelled faster than any platform ever could.
Online, queer men in the US have been joking about it with a mix of envy and resignation. Why do fictional queer men get lakeside retreats and long silences heavy with meaning, while real life mostly offers hotel rooms with thin walls and a carefully rehearsed exit plan? It is funny, bleak, and accurate enough to sting. That contrast — between fantasy and lived experience — is exactly why Heated Rivalry has landed the way it has, and why readers across the world are now flocking to the books.
At the heart of it all are Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, rival hockey players whose relationship unfolds over nearly a decade of secrecy and denial. Their story belongs to Rachel Reid’s Game Changers, which now spans six instalments. Each instalment focusses on a different couple within the same professional hockey ecosystem, but Heated Rivalry — the second book — has become the emotional centre of gravity.
Like many queer men, they hide in plain sight, terrified of being seen. The cottage, when it appears in the book, is not a grand romantic flourish so much as relief. Rachel writes it as a place where meals are shared, silences are allowed, and romance starts feeling suspiciously like a choice.
That detail has taken on a life of its own as Heated Rivalry has gone spectacularly viral. What began as a relatively small Canadian adaptation has since crossed into America and then exploded across Instagram and group chats everywhere.
Readers in India have done what readers always do — they have gone back to the source material. Paperbacks are being ordered, e-books devoured, and recommendations passed along with urgency. Conveniently, there is more on the way: Rachel’s next novel, Unrivaled, is slated for release in September.
Much of this resurgence has been driven by women readers, who speak about the books with a mix of delight and vindication. “Gay sex is hot,” one woman told me, unapologetically, “but it’s hot because it’s honest. There’s no performance for the female gaze.”
A colleague who has been devouring Heated Rivalry had read steamy novels before. “This was different.” she laughed. “It’s so enthralling because things just… happen. The relationship evolves, and before you know it, they’re back in each other’s orbit again. There aren’t these huge artificial breaks.” She admitted she’d tried to introspect why she loved it so much. “Maybe it’s because it’s weirdly wholesome? It’s written so well. The character arcs are genuinely great.”
Heated Rivalry sits squarely within the romance genre’s HEA/HFN tradition — Happily Ever After, or at the very least, Happy For Now. There is no tragic reckoning, no moral price paid for loving too openly. Which matters, because for decades gay romance on screen has been beautiful but fatalistic.
This one doesn’t.
“I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop,” a gay acquaintance told me. “I thought it would end the usual way — fear, society, something ruining it.” He laughed. “But it didn’t.”
“Which is precisely why Heated Rivalry works,” he added. “It doesn’t mirror reality. It offers a version of gay romance that’s improbably patient — not how things usually are, but how many of us wish they could be.”
I’ll admit, as a gay man, that hockey romance — or hockey smut, as the internet gleefully insists on calling it — isn’t quite my natural habitat. Lived experience is far more likely to involve hotel rooms booked by the hour, stairwells with one flickering bulb, or nightclub washrooms where inhibitions drop faster than leather trousers. Which is precisely why the fantasy works.
The cottage, then, lingers not just as a setting, but as a promise. And in a cultural moment that keeps insisting romance is dead, it’s no wonder everyone wants the invite.
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Published – January 16, 2026 07:24 pm IST