Rachel Reid delays 'Unrivaled' release to June 2027, citing Parkinson's and fame

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NEW YORK (AP) — “Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid says she is pushing back the release date of her next hockey romance novel, citing the time demands of sudden fame and the worsening symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Reid had initially planned to have “Unrivaled” released this fall, but in a video message posted Tuesday on Instagram she announced she was now expecting the book to be delayed to June 2027.

“Unrivaled" will be the third in her ”Game Changer" series about hockey rivals-secret lovers Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov. The first two books, “Heated Rivalry” and “The Long Game,” are the basis for the HBO miniseries starring Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie that has become a cultural phenomenon and made Reid a major publisher star.

“My life has gotten very different in the last couple months, and although it’s all good, it’s also taken away my ability to have quality time to write,” she said on Instagram. “And there’s nothing more important to me than ‘Unrivaled’ being the best book it can possibly be.”

She then noted that “when good things happen, sometimes the universe hands you some worse stuff to balance it out.”

“For me, that’s been that my Parkinson’s symptoms have gotten a bit worse, and it’s made it difficult physically to write, so I’m definitely a lot slower,” said Reid. She has said that she initially learned she had Parkinson's in 2023, around the time director Jacob Tierney contacted her and expressed interest in adapting her work.

Tierney's adaptation, originally developed for the Canadian streaming service Crave, was the top-rated series on HBO Max in its first season. It has been renewed for a second season.