The Long Game by Rachel Reid
Published 2022 · 123,200 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Romance, LGBTQ+ Fiction
How hard is The Long Game to read?
The Long Game scores 20 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 22 out of 100
- Reid writes plain contemporary prose with hockey slang and casual dialogue. It sits close to Beach Read in accessibility.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Sentences are short and conversational, with banter driving many scenes. Few nested clauses appear, much like Beach Read.
- Abstraction: 25 out of 100
- The story stays on concrete games, hotel rooms and conversations between Shane and Ilya. Emotions are stated directly, as in It Ends with Us.
- Information density: 25 out of 100
- A linear romance with a small cast and a steady pace. Hockey details add some texture but nothing demanding, similar to Beach Read.
- Narrative indirection: 22 out of 100
- Shane's and Ilya's feelings are voiced in close third person and dialogue. Little must be inferred, as in Beach Read.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- The secret and the choice between hockey and love carry the theme openly. There is almost no hidden symbolic layer.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- The tone is sincere and warm, with humor that comes from character banter, not irony. It reads like It Ends with Us in its emotional directness.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Romance conventions promise an emotionally satisfying ending for Shane and Ilya. The genre frame closes the questions, like the ending of Beach Read.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- The story is linear, following one couple's decision across a hockey season, with a simple structure like Beach Read.
How The Long Game is regarded
The Long Game holds a literary regard score of 23 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where the story of The Long Game takes place
- North America, pro hockey, present day (2022), the main setting