The Long Game

This was filled with equally light-hearted, tender moments and hard-hitting,

painful ones. But that being said, this was such a feel good book, I had the best

time reading it! To think, I didn’t quite believe I could love Shane and Ilya more than

I already did, but wow🥰 

My heart was seriously pounding in overdrive the whole time, especially in the last

20% of the book... and did I cry on several occasions? I got choked up a lot, while

the ending had me fully bawling. And I don’t cry too often at books, but I seriously

couldn’t help it here. The intimate moments. The inside jokes. The taunting and

teasing, even when they were thousands of miles apart. It was so damn perfect, I

was grinning the whole time.

✨ The pacing: the beginning is definitely a slow build up – I think it worked so well

because we really get reacquainted with Ilya and Shane again, where they are now

three years after the end of Heated Rivalry, and their dynamic now as a solid

couple. Then the second half was a blur for me because I couldn’t stop devouring

this. 

✨ Exploration of mental health: it was handled wonderfully. And it was definitely

unexpected, for me anyway, but actually made so much sense to the story and

character arcs. it was beautiful and heart-wrenching. 

✨ The domesticity: it was so satisfying. I think that’s what a lot of us craved in

book one, right? By the time the pair finally get together, they don’t spend as much

time together as an official couple like I imagined a lot of us wanted. But The Long

Game makes up for it and then some.

✨ The humour: Ilya is still as hilarious as ever. I was two chapters in and had

laughed out loud about ten times already. Shane and Ilya’s banter was still god-tier,

mainly Ilya teasing Shane constantly while Shane pretends he hates it. 

Any conflict that arose was handled and executed amazingly, in my opinion. It felt

necessary, you know? It wasn’t useless drama to heighten the angst. It was raw and

stemmed from the underlying themes that ran through the book. The conflicts

made sense, and in turn, they were that much more gut-wrenching. It all felt

so real. 

I could endlessly fangirl about this book. I truly cannot articulate how perfect this

was.