Heated Rivalry

By Rachel Reid, 2024

To be honest, I found this novel annoying. I liked the sexy bits and the overall sense of sex-positivity. The story of two gay guys developing a loving relationship after meeting for casual sex is welcome, and rare in any kind of literature. Reid’s descriptions of how Shane and Ilya notice each other, how Ilya brings the naïve Shane along, how they (mostly Shane) experience sexual pleasure are fully believable. I wonder if she has interviewed a lot of young gay men to research the story or are these well-developed tropes in fantasy stories. And I’m cheering the fact that Shane and Ilya are paraded in front of millions of readers in mass market publishing and streaming television. I imagine locker rooms full of hunky men surreptitiously reading the explicit descriptions of men like themselves finding sexual ecstasy and wondering about themselves.

Particularly, I would congratulate Rachel Reid for showing how a macho relationship can negotiate consent and gain pleasure from it. While gay porn may be more explicit and more lingering in its description of sex scenes, it often plays into power and dominance in ways that normalize unequal, non-consensual relationships. (Interestingly, the recent movie Pillion explores a realistic relationship of dominance and submission in which the characters respect their partners’ boundaries even when they conflict with their own. If this is a trend, it’s a positive one for mass media.)

The problem that holds me back is the cleaned-up story line. The story is a fantasy. That’s what Reid intended to write, and it’s what her readers are looking for, so kudos to her for setting an objective and achieving it. But it’s not what I want in a novel and it’s not what the topics of sexual pleasure, homophobia and consent deserve.

Reading the story, I wanted to know how these two queer guys deal with casual locker-room homophobia. Do they join in, watch silently, lead their teammates toward a healthier understanding of gay sexuality? Reid acknowledges that it’s a major factor in their lives, but we don’t know much more than that. Does their relationship affect other relations with their teammates, coaches, business managers? Their pretences and secrecy would certainly affect those around them, and affect their own mental health, but that’s not here except for a few superficial descriptions about their families and one friend. Even Shane’s biracial identity is lost – we know his mother is Japanese Canadian, but does he ever deal with racism? It feels like a theme that Ried explored in an earlier draft and then decided to remove, perhaps on the advice of an editor who said it makes the relationship too complicated for a fantasy novel.

By contrast, Reid makes more of their relationships with key women in their lives, Shane’s movie star girlfriend and Ilya’s Russian American girlfriend. They figure out the boys’ real erotic interests and offer the non-judgemental support they need, someone to talk to and to support their straight façade. This is a little stereotypical, but at least it shows that Reid can make their lives a bit more complicated if she chooses.

The reason the sanitized storyline bugs me is that I want the relationship to feel like it takes place in the real world. I want it to be not a fairy tale with some enlightening moral examples, but an exploration of how two real people work out their lives in a setting that I can relate to. So while I think this could have been an engaging and thoughtful queer-positive story, I find myself disappointed that it’s nothing more than a fantasy.