Jacob Shymanski

But A Man Called Ove was one of his previous books.

A series that I touched on earlier this year because I interviewed the author, Rachel Reed.

She's the author of the Heated Rivalry series, which that is a very well-known title nowadays because it kind of blew up when the TV show edition came out.

And I read book three of the series.

I read the first two for the interview with Rachel Reed and then I read book three during the holidays.

And Red, if you're not aware, and for the listeners, heated rivalry has become a Twilight-esque, a Fifty Shades of Grey-esque phenomenon in romance and erotica, quite frankly.

And I just had to shout it out because it was so cool that...

On this show, I got to interview Rachel Reid before all of this blew up.

Now, to be clear, her series was fairly successful.

It was a Canadian gay hockey romance series that Crave, a Canadian company, picked up to produce a Canadian TV show.

Small budget.

And then HBO picked it up to distribute it across the U.S.

And when that show came out, it absolutely blew up.

And as a result, has kind of brought a ton of attention to hockey as a sport.

as a whole and what's made heated rivalry so popular i think and from what i've read of a lot of people who are big fans of it is that it puts a very positive story forward of gay men who in fiction typically do not get positive outcomes and it's very refreshing and it's a romance that a lot of people find very satisfying in a way that they've never seen before also people like the erotica

But that's not very deep.

But just I had to bring it up because heated rivalry is an absolute phenomenon that if you haven't heard about it already, you will soon.

So you're welcome.

So that's Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reed.

He does use the word okay over and over again, which is, it's kind of a pattern and it's very purposeful, but it's also, like you say, kind of, the whole book has a