Sofie’s Reviews > Heated Rivalry > Status Update

okay sick so i was totally wrong and i would've known that if i'd read literally one more page. i should know by now that the book tends to fill in gaps between time jumps at the beginning of or even throughout the chapters. but anyway. great scene, even better now that i can picture hudson williams' absolute masterclass of a performance

(cont.)
so far it seems like the book is more effective at flip-flopping between contrasting emotions (and denial SO much denial) rather than investigating the messy concoction of contradiction. maybe that's just a consequence of connor and hudson giving incredibly layered performances but idk!! we'll see how the emotions continue to resonate as we really get into the juicy stuff moving forward

NO SCENE OF SHANE WATCHING ILYA WIN THE CUP??? i mean i KNOW it's an incredibly visual moment but wow i had no idea it was a tv original!!! i guess that addition might've been born out of the messier, less sympathetic tone of the previous scene. unlike in the book, we needed to be shown that shane still cares deeply for ilya despite being angry at how things were left

(cont.)
it's a little strange to me that shane is SO sympathetic to ilya in this moment, but maybe it's partially bc of the description of how ROUGH ilya looks, compared to the show which didn't seem to put as much emphasis on any dark circles or standoffish posture/costuming. he's already been to the draining gala, and he wears that melancholy too clearly for shane to ignore for the sake of his own frustration

fascinated by the choice to switch around the order of events from this chapter in the adaptation. placing the grigori scene AFTER shane tries to talk to ilya allows for both us and shane to be more frustrated and confused by ilya's cold behavior. it's messier. but in the book, we've already read the grigori scene, and even though shane still has no idea, he's somehow as sympathetic to ilya as we are after that scene

the concept of ilya improving his english via fast and the furious movies is. Hilarious. if we still get the line about the new yorker later on, this adds such an endearing layer to it. cause then it's not just a lie purely for comedic effect bc it's the most boring thing ilya could think of, we now know the actual TRUTH of why his english is better. and it's RIDICULOUS. but still a detail that shane wishes he knew

cont. from my last comment

genuinely though it is SO fascinating getting to experience this story like this. cause my versions of hollanov are undeniably the ones from the adaptation, so trying to think backwards about how jacob, hudson, and connor read the source material and then crafted their own versions is a fucking blast it's like trying to cut out puzzle pieces from a finished puzzle

the experience of reading this book after having watched the show is that i'll be imagining hudson!shane and connor!ilya saying this slightly different dialogue and doing these slightly altered versions of scenes and then sometimes rachel will write something so OFF in their internal monologue that my brain has to factory reset before moving on to the next sentence. i simply HAVE to pretend i do not see and move on

it just makes so much objective sense for ilya to be the one to fall first simply bc he's more equipped to acknowledge it, even if he then immediately buries it cause it terrifies him. he's more emotionally intelligent than shane is, maybe bc he grew up in the household he did and maybe bc he grew up queer in russia (probably a combo of both)

ilya likening himself to a cartoon villain because of his accent is so !!!!!!!!!! fucking sad!!!!!! i’m sure that’s another reason why he went with the cocky asshole persona. he already sounds like the bad guy so he might as well act and look the part too. and then compare that to shane’s perfect french, a language that is seen as beautiful and proper and intelligent, of course it makes ilya feel even worse