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If you need further proof that Boys’ Love is the only light left in our messed-up world, look no further than New York City’s public library, which saw e-book checkouts of Heated Rivalry spike a whopping 529% in recent days. The bookworm in me loves to see it.
The instigator behind this smutty read-a-thon was none other than New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. During a Sunday news conference, Mamdani was carrying out his mayoral duties, including telling people to stay home and safe from the winter storm, when he dropped the unexpected recommendation.
“The snow is coming down heavily across our city and I can think of no better excuse for New Yorkers to stay home, take a long nap, or take advantage of our public library’s offer of free access to Heated Rivalry on e-book or audiobook for anyone with a library card,” Mamdani said.
The effects of the mayor’s book rec were seen immediately. The New York Public Library saw a 529% increase in the number of downloads of Heated Rivalry after Mamdani’s news conference, according to The New York Times.
Library spokesperson Lizzie Tribone said that 86% of the downloads occurred after the mayor’s endorsement. A spokeswoman for Mamdani said he hadn’t read Heated Rivalry but was “very excited to see so much enthusiasm about using the resources of the public library.”
The New York Public Library made an unlimited number of copies of Heated Rivalry, part of the Game Changers series, available on its app on Saturday. Since that day, Heated Rivalry has been downloaded from the library more than 5,000 times. The six books in the series have more than 13,000 downloads.
“We expect this number to continue to climb,” Tribone said.
The e-book and audiobook versions of Heated Rivalry and all the other books in the Gamechangers series will be available for free via the New York Public Library through Valentine’s Day on February 14.
Now a global streaming sensation, Heated Rivalry is one book in a series by Rachel Reid. It tells the story of a secret romance between two closeted gay hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Spoiler alert: There is a lot of smut in the book and the HBO series.
Since the show’s release in November, the book has soared in popularity, making it very hard to find across the country. At one point in early December, books in the Game Changers series were temporarily out of stock on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble.
Now, before some of you go clutching your pearls, let me just say that anything that encourages people to read a book is a good thing.
According to YouGov, while the median American read two books in 2025, 40% read no books at all. Even sadder is the stat from 2023 that reported a long-term decline in 13-year-olds who read for fun on a near-daily basis. It was 13%, down from 17% in 2020 and 27% in 2012. (I am not suggesting 13-year-olds read Heated Rivalry).
As I mentioned earlier, the world is a bit of a mess. When I want to forget about it all, I read. I read books, fanfics, manga, light novels—anything that interests me. And when I’ve been in a reading slump, often from having too much work and life going on, the things that always take me out are things like Heated Rivalry.
Stories that make me feel something, whether that’s yearning or that it’s way too hot in whatever room I’m sitting in. Stories that make me squeal. Stories that make me want to tell my friends what I’m reading.
Plus, the great thing about falling in love with a book is that it almost always leaves you itching to start reading another book, and then another. And I find that much more valuable than trying to navigate the AI slop jungle we’re living in and scrolling through unending doom.
English (US) ·