Ali Hazelwood Heats up the Video Game World in Lovers-to-Enemies Romance “Two Can Play ”(Exclusive)

The writer's new novella, available only in audio, is out now through Spotify Audiobooks

Like so many of us this year, romance novelist Ali Hazelwood couldn’t get enough of Luca Guadagnino’s tennis movie Challengers.

“I literally started looking for fanfiction the second the movie was over,” the Italian writer, who writes under the Hazelwood pen name, tells PEOPLE. “If people were not giving me the right answer when I ask, ‘Who do you ship?’ — and the right answer is, ‘All three of them together’ — I was like, 'We're not friends anymore.’”

Like the Zendaya-led film, competition runs rampant in many of the bestselling novelist’s books, too. There’s the STEM-based academic rivalry in her runaway success, the 2021 novel The Love Hypothesis, and the competition between a diver and swimmer in her upcoming 2025 release, Deep End.

But in the author’s new audio-only novella, Two Can Play, available Oct. 1 through Spotify Audiobooks, Hazelwood turns her pen toward the world of gaming — a world that the author admits she was only familiar with in passing.

“I actually do not play video games, but I am surrounded by gamers,” Hazelwood says. “[The book] is sort of a love letter to my friends, and also my husband, [who] is a big gamer.”

“I get really excited about the things that my friends get excited about,” the author adds. “I think it's a fandom thing. I just love when my friends have special interests and I get interested in what they are excited about.”

Related: PEOPLE Picks Our Staff's Favorite Romance Novels

Two Can Play is an enemies-to-lovers romance following Viola, a video game designer forced to adapt her favorite book series with Jesse, her co-lead who wants nothing to do with her, per the book's description. Things heat up when the two are forced to spend time together during a winter retreat at an isolated mountain lodge.

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“When I was writing this, I was asking my friends their opinions about games, and then they become opinions of the characters,” Hazelwood says of the subject matter. “It was just so fun.”

Even though she's not a gamer, the author does know the fandom realm well. Hazelwood famously got her start writing fanfiction — The Love Hypothesis was originally a Star Wars fanfiction — and says that despite her status as a revered romance novelist, her readership feels more like a mutual relationship than anything.

“On the one hand, there are people who are like, ‘Oh my God, I love your books.’ But then I am talking with those people about how much we love other people's books,” Hazelwood says. “It just feels like it's more of a community than me having a readership … It feels very equal to me lots of times.”

Related: From Fifty Shades of Grey to After: 5 Fan Fiction Stories That Became Published Novels

Two Can Play also allowed Hazelwood to connect with her fans in a new way: by inviting them to help choose the book’s cover, which she did via Instagram.

“That was just such a cool idea,” Hazelwood says of the opportunity presented by Spotify. And though Two Can Play being an audio-only story didn’t affect the author's writing process, it did help her to continue her own love of audiobooks.

“I think audiobooks are fantastic,” Hazelwood adds. “I love narrators. Some narrators, they're actors. They are so talented, they bring everything to life. They make me think of characters in ways that I hadn't before. It's a whole art.”

The romance genre is also one Hazelwood loves to read. Writers like Yulin Kuang, Nalini Singh and Shirlene Obuobi are among some of the author’s favorites, and she gravitates more toward the paranormal romance genre too. Hazelwood has some thoughts on the Twilight books, however.

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“It was never quite smutty enough for me,” the author says. “Listen, I got to admit who I am.”

And for readers who, like Hazelwood, gravitate toward different sub-genres depending on the weather, good news: Two Can Play will serve that purpose.

“I just hope people will like it and that it will give them a few hours of escapism in their fall and winter,” the author says.

Two Can Play is available now through Spotify Audiobooks, and can be purchased at any audiobook retailer.

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