i love jacob tierney and his adaptation but tbh i kinda hate some of the changes he made.
first of all making svetlana his childhood friend changed so much of the plot bc a big part of ilya’s story is that he has no deep connections with anyone other than shane and people in shane’s life. in the big fight they had in tlg ilya tells shane smth like “i have nobody” in order to explain to him that shane told their secret to all these people but ilya has bo one to tell his secret to. and in the show that would be unrealistic bc he’s much closer to svetlana but also because she literally found out in the show that “jane” is a guy. and that also ruins a really important scene in the long game when ilya reconnects with svetlana and tells her about shane. and that scene is not only important it’s also lowkey funny because svetlana tells him smth like “did you sleep with all the women in america so you had to go for men?” and it’s probably not gonna make it to the show which sucks bc it’s so funny.
i also hate that in the show shane had the macrobiotic diet his entire life. first of all throughout the season the diet was very inconsistent because he constantly drank ginger ale which is full of sugar, he ate ice cream at the olympics, he ate burgers and pasta in the cottage episode, and most importantly he ate ilya’s tuna melt. both the tuna melt and the diet are such important parts of the story that happen in different parts of the series and combining them makes the story make no sense. in the book shane refused to even eat one cookie on christmas because it would make the diet inconsistent so it’s unrealistic that shane would give himself cheat meals. the diet was supposed to be a way of symbolizing shane’s pressure in his team with the pressure of keeping a secret. and once he gets outed and leaves montreal he chooses to prioritize himself and that is when he decides to lose the diet, and that’s a storyline from a whole different book.
other than that the show is perfect tho.