If you’ve been paying any attention to television in the past year you know that HBO Max’s Heated Rivalry is one of the biggest new series around. The first season of the hockey romance first premiered last November and quickly became not only a massive streaming hit, but a huge pop culture phenomenon. The popularity of that series came as no surprise to readers as that series is based on Rachel Reid’s popular Game Changers novel series and now, Netflix has found their answer to HBO’s hit on the pages of another popular book.
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Netflix is heading to the ice to adapt Hannah Grace’s viral hockey romance novel, Icebreaker. One of the most recent viral books in the wildly popular romance subgenre, the book centers around the relationship between two college athletes, a figure skater and a hockey player. The book is the first in Grace’s “Maple Hills Series” which consists of two books beyond Icebreaker: Wildfire and Daydream. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series will follow Anastasia Allen, a competitive figure skater with her eyes on Olympic gold. Everything changes when Anastasia is forced to share the rink with Nate Hawkins, a hockey player who’s equally determined to go pro. Despite the cold temperature on the ice, the heat between Anastasia and Nate is undeniable. Is ambition or attraction the sharper blade?
“I have been a fan of steamy YA since the 7th grade; reading Judy Blume stealthily hidden behind a text book,” showrunner Amanda Lasher said. “I love this genre, and it’s been a joy working with Jade [Bartlett], the team at Unwell and Netflix to bring Hannah Grace’s beloved Icebreaker novel to the screen.”
Icebreaker May Be a Wildly Popular Novel But Book Fans Are Already Concerned
News that Netflix is going all in on the hockey romance subgenre is certainly welcome by not only fans of Heated Rivalry but of the trendy book genre generally, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t already some emerging concerns about this particular adaptation of Grace’s novel. In her statement, Lasher spoke about being a fan of “steamy YA” with the implication being that Icebreaker is a YA novel. However, that is actually not the case. The book, as well as the rest of Grace’s “Maple Hills Series”, is technically classified as New Adult or New Adult Contemporary Romance. The distinction here is that books in the New Adult category tend to have more mature themes and explicit scenes. They are typically more appropriate for older teens and adults while YA (or Young Adult) books tend to be more skewed to slightly younger audiences at its lower range, usually encompassing preteens in their demographic. With Icebreaker having some of the more mature elements you’d expect in New Adult fiction, there are fans already questioning if Netflix is going to properly adapt the book and maintain the elements that have made it such an attractive story.
What is also interesting is that many fans have already started pointing out that, while the book has been popular and Heated Rivalry was popular for HBO, that doesn’t mean Icebreaker will have the same success. One of the key elements of Heated Rivalry’s massive impact is its LGBTQ+ themes. It’s something that made the series unique as compared to other sports drama stories and some have noted that Icebreaker is much more generic—with some even comparing it to a revamp of a popular 90s movie, The Cutting Edge. The apprehension that book and television fans have isn’t without merit; Heated Rivalry is certainly unlike anything that we’ve really seen on television and its wild popularity not only came as a surprise broadly, but marked a rare instance of television managing to jump onto the cultural moment happening in the literary world (in contrast, we’re still waiting for a solid romantasy adaptation and one can argue that that trend is starting to wane. That said, Prime Video recently launched their own hockey romance series, Off Campus and it’s already proving to be a huge success. We’ll just have to take this one to the ice and see.
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