by Stephanie Domet

From a living room in suburban Halifax to The New York Times bestseller list, Rachel Reid reflects on arts and culture in Nova Scotia, and why she made a game-changing donation to the Annapolis Valley Regional Libraries.

There are, no doubt, endless ways to spend newfound wealth. If you’re a Russian hockey star with a taste for the good life, like, say, Ilya Rozanov, you’re spending it on flashy cars, expensive vodka, and nights out on the town. If you’re Canada’s hockey golden boy Shane Hollander, you’re socking it into investment properties and an incredible cottage of your own that’s more like a glass mansion. And if you’re Rachel Reid, The New York Times bestselling author of the Game Changers series of queer hockey romance novels that includes Heated Rivalry (and therefore, in the parlance of the internet, the “mother” of Shane and Ilya), you’re making a big donation—$300,000—to the Annapolis Valley Regional Library System, and helping to raise more than 70,000 additional dollars with a fundraising event in Wolfville in September, that included a silent auction of Heated Rivalry items also donated by Reid, and a live conversation on stage hosted by yours truly.

I started our on-stage conversation by asking Rachel why she made such a game- changing donation—that $300,000 will buy the AVRL about six months of time, forestalling the closure of five rural branches, and has allowed the library to begin to hire back some of the workers who were laid off after the provincial budget was passed this spring. The budget maintained funding levels for the libraries that have been static since 2020, despite the steadily rising cost of everything.

“I have been very, very blessed this year,” Reid said. “It really wasn’t a tough decision at all. I just saw an opportunity to help, and I wanted to do it, because I think that’s what people should do when they’re blessed.”

Blessed is perhaps an understatement. This time last year, before the Crave original series adaptation of two of her books ( Game Changer and Heated Rivalry ) debuted in Canada and the US, where it was picked up by HBO, Reid was explaining to her two kids that becoming a New York Times bestselling author was never going to happen, that it was just not something that was within the realm of the possible. And then the show went to air with the first two of its six episodes on November 28, 2025, and things quickly changed. Though publisher Harlequin was slow to recognize the wild demand for the books, which meant copies were slow to hit bookstore shelves as the show went to air, once copies were widely available, they took up residence on bestseller lists in Canada and the US including, yes, The New York Times . In February, five of the ten spots on Canadian bestseller lists were held by Reid’s books for several weeks. The show was renewed for a second season before the first had finished airing (it’s now in production, and Reid is finishing edits on the next installment in the series, Unrivalled , the third Shane and Ilya book, due June 1, 2027), a new hardcover edition of Heated Rivalry was released this fall, and Reid has been on a cross-continent book tour promoting it. It, too, became a New York Times bestseller, entering the list at number nine in early October.

Although Reid is massively, mind-bogglingly, internationally famous right now, experiencing a level of fame that is “not normal” for a writer, she still writes her bestselling novels from her suburban Halifax living room. And she reflects fondly on the lively, vibrant Halifax arts scene out of which her writing arose. She worked at The Coast weekly back in the early 2000s, around the same time she was the drummer in the late, lamented punk band The Stolen Minks, and a regular at Halifax Burlesque, performing mostly sports-themed stripteases under the name Miss Conduct. She recalls one such routine in which she stripped out of borrowed hockey gear. “It smelled really bad, so I was happy to take it off.” Being part of that vibrant, interconnected art scene made participating seem natural, and she felt encouraged that she could try various ways of participating. “I don’t think it occurred to me that there was anything I couldn’t do,” she said. When the provincial budget was released earlier this year, Reid posted on Instagram about the cuts and how short-sighted and devastating they are, referencing the direct line she draws from those early experiences playing live music and performing at burlesque shows to becoming the writer she is today. In our conversation, she reflected on that scene, and the withdrawal of provincial government support for it: “It’s one of the coolest things about living here, so it makes me really sad that it’s not getting the funding that it used to.” These days, Reid herself is one of the coolest things about living here. Her books—including the standalones The Shots You Take and Time To Shine —even feature some Nova Scotian characters and settings (particularly those standalones).

And no doubt she has put Nova Scotia on the map for international fans, many of whom donated to the Annapolis Valley Regional Library cause in celebration of Reid’s birthday on September 2. And while men’s major league hockey culture may be slow to change— the homophobia and stigma around mental health struggles Reid highlights in all her books show few signs of dissipating—Reid’s work has changed lives. She says she regularly hears from people who say Heated Rivalry has helped them know themselves better, helped them realize they deserve passionate love, helped them care for themselves with more compassion. And at the end of September, another very tangible real-world change was realized: Accent Aigu, the production company that made Heated Rivalry , led by Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, announced the formation of the Irina Foundation, which shares its name with the fictional foundation started by Shane and Ilya in The Long Game , Reid’s sequel to Heated Rivalr y. The foundation will support inclusion in sports and arts and culture, and its first donation was to ImagineNATIVE, the world’s largest presenter of indigenous-made media. A beautiful example of the power of books to change lives—from the author’s, on down.

STEPHANIE DOMET is a writer who lives in Halifax where she is also the co-executive director of AfterWords Literary Festival, and a Game Changers Series superfan.