My thoughts on the long game by Rachel Reid
As someone diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety, I found the execution of Ilya’s mental health journey in the long game incredibly frustrating. The narrative sets up a profound, devastatingly accurate depiction of a high functioning person collapsing under the weight of chronic mental illness, only to completely bypass the realistic work of healing in favor of lazy romance tropes.
When you look at the text, the book actively sabotages its own depth in five distinct ways:
1. In Heated Rivalry, we learn that Ilya’s depression is deep seated and chronic, but he manages to survive by chasing external distractions: the adrenaline of winning, constant partying, and casual hookups to mimic the intimacy he lacked. When he moves to Ottawa and commits to Shane exclusively, every single one of those self medicating shields is suddenly stripped away. He is the captain of a struggling team, visibly isolating himself, losing weight, and experiencing terrifying, chronic nightmares about finding his mother’s body as a child. This was the perfect narrative setup for a profound internal journey. The book should have forced Ilya to learn how to sit with his own mind and navigate his trauma without his usual armor. Instead, his internal growth completely stalls, he stays stagnant, waiting for external circumstances to change rather than processing an internal shift.
2. The secrecy of their relationship absolutely could, and should, have been used as a plotline line, but it shouldn't have been the entire plotline. In a psychologically realistic story, the closet would act as a magnifying glass for Ilya’s pre-existing clinical depression, not the sole cause of it. By framing the closet as the ultimate source of his misery, and public validation as the ultimate relief, the book treats chronic clinical depression like a situational problem with a quick fix. While the introduction of his therapist, Galina, is a step in the right direction, the emotional payoff of the ending accidentally perpetuates a damaging fallacy: that once the external circumstances (the secret) are fixed, a lifelong, structurally complex mental illness is somehow magically "solved."
3. Because the book avoids the heavy, ugly realism of a chronic mental health crisis, the relationship dynamic between the two leads gets completely flattened. Loving a severely depressed partner takes a massive emotional toll, and the narrative misses the mark on how both characters would realistically react. Shane logically should have been drowning in a massive guilt complex, thinking, "I brought him to Ottawa, I am keeping him hidden, therefore I am causing this."
Meanwhile, the Ilya established early in canon had a sharp, self-protective edge. It would have been entirely in character for him to feel a toxic flicker of resentment toward Shane for the isolation and misery he is experiencing in Ottawa.
Instead of exploring these complex, heavy emotions, the narrative scales Shane's reactions down to petty, superficial bickering about hockey focus and attitude. Shane just comes across as mean, oblivious, and selfish, rather than a deeply observant partner who is profoundly burdened and struggling to handle the weight of a drowning loved one.
4. The most frustrating part of this execution is how the narrative finally forces a resolution to their communication breakdown. Ilya spirals to the absolute brink, experiencing passive suicidal ideation to the point of wishing his plane would just crash so he wouldn't have to deal with the exhausting weight of living anymore. Instead of forcing the characters to do the hard, painful, day to day emotional labor of communicating and healing, the narrative relies on a massive cop-out: the plane incident actually happens. Having their deep seated, structural psychological problems abruptly "solved" by Ilya almost dying in a near fatal plane crash is a cheap narrative shortcut. It uses a life or death trauma to shock Shane into clarity and force an instant perspective shift, rather than allowing the characters to earn their healing through genuine growth and mutual understanding.
5. And don’t get me started on how the book suddenly turns Shane from this tight wound people pleaser person who’s filled with anxiety and the need to ‘fix’ everything into a dense oblivious partner who suddenly can’t tell that the love of his life is hurting. Just to prolong the angst. And suddenly doesn’t have a problem with living a double life without it eating him alive like it would do any person with anxiety.
