Heated Rivalry Review

Romance novels adapted for television usually arrive apologising for themselves. Jacob Tierney does the opposite, filming Rachel Reid's book on the conviction that a genre love story deserves the same care as a prestige drama, and the result drew one of the highest critic scores any series managed in 2025, close to unanimous across roughly ninety reviews.

The structure helps. Six episodes cover ten years, so the relationship between Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov is built in jumps, each meeting carrying everything the previous one left unsaid. Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie were unknowns and the casting is the whole gamble, which pays off, because the series lives or dies on whether those two look like people who cannot stop.

The hockey is right as well, shot close and fast by people who plainly watch the sport. The limits come from the source. Plotting is thin, the supporting characters mostly exist to react, and the closet plot resolves along lines any reader of the novel can call in advance. None of that is a surprise, and none of it is really a complaint. A second season adapting the sequel is due in 2027.