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🌶️🌶️

CW

🟥 Biphobia

🟥 Divorce

🟥 Family Estrangement

🟥 Parent Death

Tropes

🎮 Friends to Lovers

🎮 Slow Burn

🎮 Gen X Romance

🎮 Grumpy/Sunshine

Role Playing is not only one of my favorite book covers of the year (the moon? the figurines on the table? the pho?), but it is easily one of my favorite books of the year. Two main characters that have kind of given up on love meet through an online gaming guild and have radically different expectations about who the other is? It is marvelous.

Maggie is a divorced woman that just sent her son off to college. She was already a hermit, but now she has even more of a reason to be. After being forced to go out to a book club, she finds a new gaming guild that connects her with a new friend.

Aiden is that new friend, who is actually a man her age that moved back to town when his father was sick. Now he’s just taking care of his mother, going to classes at the community college, and playing with his guild. Oh, and he has to take a date to a wedding coming up.

The friendship developed between them is great. I was constantly wondering when they’d meet in real life, or if they would at all. The way they end up meeting was perfect and created a great path for them to go from friends to lovers.

What made this book stand out among others is how the coming out conversation was handled between Aiden and Maggie. It was wonderful to see Aiden learn more about what his identity was with the help of his new friend, but also that she was helping him with no judgment. It was a beautiful moment and one of my favorites in the book.

Everything about this book worked so well, and I need to buy my own copy so I can start annotating ASAP.