Dungeons and Drama

This YA book was so fun to read - I demolished it in two days! It was a joy to read about characters who share my interests, and witness the fantastic friend group that formed. The community at the game store was a beautiful thing too. Have already pre-ordered Kristy Boyce’s second game themed book that comes out early 2025.

This was a cute, fun read! When I first heard about the premise I was like “why would the drama kids and the TTRPG/LARP kids be enemies, they are natural allies???” but um pretty quickly the characters figure that out too soo...good for them.

I will say: for being die-hard theater nerd Riley sure does refer to Broadway musical CAST RECORDINGS as SOUNDTRACKS and therefore as a teen I would have cyberbullied her. DO YOUR RESEARCH KRISTY BOYCE >:(

I write this review as a D&D player and former theater actress I TOTALLY LOVED IT! I bought it just for the title, knowing what I was getting into, and it became better than expected! To me this brings romance in a different way, to me more relatable and includes groups of people that are often overlooked at high-school.

I read in other reviews that some people thought the story was flat, I agree that there wasn't too much of a backstory. This isn't fantasy YA writing, this is romance. In my opinion and coming from someone who mainly reads fantasy, you don't need 4 chapters for world building nor the characters need to be complex in a romance book... because this is totally relatable without any effort, especially because the target audience is well defined, so we can identify with one or more characters, and understand where their concerns and decisions come from.

Even if you don't relate directly, didn't we all, at some point, make reckless choices when we were in high school? At that age anything is a drama, the end of the world, so to Riley being kept away from theater activities and brought to work at a gamer store WAS indeed a punishment.

I like how the relationship between her parents after divorce is still amicable, and her mom even wishes for Riley to have a relationship with her father even though they both clearly think his priorities lie in his store and gaming sessions.

In this matter, I can relate with her mom because my hubby IS a DM and also enjoys painting his miniatures and terrains, so much that sometimes I myself feel he enjoys that even more than spending time with us as a family. Of course he doesn't, but I related to how Shannon must have felt having her then husband dedicate so much time and effort into his store and game-related activities.

And on the other hand, I enjoyed Riley's dad opening to her, and she finding out that he actually cares for what she does, he is a proud dad regardless of her interests being totally opposite to his. I cried myself out on their chat at the hospital, so sincere and tbh I felt the book was telling my own story. My dad had a heart attack 2 years ago and we hadn't seen each other for 4 years because we live in different countries and then COVID happened... but we took that time to realize how much we've lost over not-so-important matters.

Now, regarding the main topic, Riley and Nathan's relationship... I bought it, yes it is a trope and I could foresee everything that happened, the what was predictable but not always the how it was going to happen, so I liked that very much. Then again, this is a romance book of less than 300 pages, I was expecting actually something simpler. It was predictable, yet I enjoyed how Kristy wrote and developed their story... so yeah, I dig it