I was immediately drawn to the idea of a contemporary story switching with a TTRPG.

A group of LGBTQ friends finds their party balancing the stresses of adulthood with the challenges of cults and adventures.

Unfortunately, the split focus resulted in this whole story being unsatisfactory. There are so many characters, and then they also have characters in the game. This results in none of the characters getting the time or the space for us to get to know them. All the characters ended up feeling flat and a little bit like stereotypes.

The settings equally suffer from lack of development. None of the locations felt like real places.

In addition, there are multiple story threads that are unceremoniously dropped by the end of the book, leaving almost everything unresolved.

The concept was good,and I liked how part of the TTRPG adventures reflected one of the real world difficulties the group was facing. I just wish everything had been fleshed out more.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for the ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.

This was such a fun read! The characters felt very realistic and relatable. As someone who hasn't played a TTRPG, this book has definitely motivated me to jump into that world.

This is one of those ARCs where the formatting was so off-putting that it made the book hard to read. There's not anything the author can do about that, but the experience was soured for me.

Now, I love D&D. I've played for years, followed live play shows and podcasts, was obsessed with playing in high school even though no one else in my town wanted to form a party, and I'm queer, but this book...lacked. So. Much. I just didn't care about it. Not the characters, not the plot, or even the D&D game. I was really disappointed with this book, but honestly, pretty much every book these days that tries to sell its D&D subplot feels like they're just trying to throw common tropes out without any deeper thought for readers that might *actually* play, so...what can you do?

I started reading this book and found that it was not for me. I didn't want to review a book that I didn't finish.

I loved this books the context is new to me. I’m not a gamer, I’ve never played DND or anything of the sort. I was effy at first to try something out of my comfort zone, but the descriptive style of writing and the dramatic sold the case. I got confused a lot, however, and there were many characters I lost track. Kinda only remember the name Ben.

To begin with a disclaimer: I’m not a gamer, although I appreciate both the imagination and the community-building involved. I found the idea of a queer (in the most inclusive meaning) D & D club appealing. I wondered how would this be any different from a mainstream (cis/het) club. The answer turned out to be both not so much and a lot.

The players at the Readmore Comix and Games store’s weekly game include both out and closeted gays, a transgender dungeon master, and a confused maybe-bisexual. The group has become too small for a great adventure, so when a new guy joins, sensitive, lonely Ben is instantly smitten. That is, until his character is killed in the game, the boyfriend of the closeted banker is accosted on the street, and the connections and parallels between the game and real life become even stronger. The game characters, situations, and humor reflect the changing worlds of the players.

Since I’m not a gamer, I didn’t connect with much of the game action. I kept thinking I’d never write a plot line like that, while I tried to keep in mind that games have a different story structure. What mattered to me were the reactions and interactions of the players. I suspect that the intended audience, queerfolk who are also gamers, would love the campy atmosphere and the burgeoning sexual tension between Ben and the new guy.
In the end, though, I found the resolution too pat, the problems too easily overcome, and too many questions left unanswered. But for all that, it’s a sweet gay-gamer-geeky love story sure to bring a smile to many readers’ faces.

It's such a cute book about about a group of role-players. The unlikely friendships are cute and adorable.

I read this story while I was in the hospital. I enjoyed it but didn't retain enough for a proper review. I primarily chose to read this book because I grew up just outside of Cleveland Hts.

Adorable sweet, nerdy, and full of all the good and sad feels. I was blushing along with our awkward crush, pumping my fist for victory in the campaign, and utterly charmed.

Really, really well-done tale of a bunch of dweebs (my people!!) playing their way through a D&D campaign. Henderson does a fantastic job narrating the story and blending the worlds - his fictional world, and the deeper one crafted by his characters within the story.

I don’t know why this book doesn’t have better reviews, I thought it was fun and clever and I liked the characters. Certain moments of the D&D story were absurd in the best way and I got looks from my fiancé for chuckling out loud several times. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d love a sequel with a different campaign. I think Celeste would make a great protagonist.

Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This story intersperses a series of LGBTQ love story vignettes with those same characters coming together to play a table-top RPG (Dungeons and Dragons).

In theory, the characters are all supposed to be in their mid-twenties, but I felt most (if not all) of them acted younger, and while there are A LOT of sex jokes and references, there is no explicit sex to restrict this to a more adult audience.

In addition to the relationship ups and downs, and the characters’ inner struggles – Ben’s low self-esteem and loneliness; Valerie’s lack of communication and volatility; Moonyham’s issues with external and internalised homophobia – there is a sub-plot about vampire cosplayers challenging the D’n’D’ers in an imaginary power contest, which felt a little underdeveloped and underconnected to the rest of the plot.

While I didn’t really connect to the characters on an emotional level, finding the focus on relationship drama a little too intense for me (I preferred the RPG drama) and the characters a little bit unlikable, this was a fairly enjoyable, easy read which covered some interesting relationship issues and may find a more appreciative audience in a teen-/young adult readership.

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

This book was interesting. I was a little confused by the vampire elements but enjoyed the portrayal of the queer D&D community.

As someone who grew up playing RPG, the title of this book caught my attention immediately. It was well written and you get attach to the characters. The story within the story was really fun to read, and sometimes I didn’t want it to end, but we would get back to the main story and I also didn’t want that to come to an end.

I want to purchased this book later one to be able to reread it and enjoy it properly, have read it during the pandemic and being exhausted all the time because of that, and it dfntly influenced my not so long review.

Rating: DNF

I…don’t know what to say about this book really. It sounded like something I would really enjoy, it was set in Ohio, and I was lucky enough to get access to it early via NetGalley. So, I read this book back in January, and I had expected to write up the review after thinking about the book for a week or so to formulate a proper review…and of course I went into a big ol’ slump and didn’t. I will still try to write up the review as best as I can from memory, but I may not be as specific as I would prefer to be.

First, I remember feeling like most of the characters were bad stereotypes of geeks, which is so unfortunate. It felt like the author was trying to write a geek focused book because of the rising popularity of geekdom in the world. But instead it just felt forced and negatively judgmental. Like, from what I remember Ben is the unemployed loner loser geek who lives at home in his mom’s basement. Yes, I’m sure there are some geeks who may actually still fill this stereotype but it is so derogatory and harmful to what it really is to be a geek or a nerd today.

Between the portrayal of characters, and then the way the in-game story and the way rules were handled for the D&D game play…it felt like if the author was an RPG player that they weren’t all that familiar with 5th Edition D&D.

Then there was the storyline with the rival vampire role-playing group which just felt contrived and ridiculous.

I’m sorry, I wanted to like this story, and I wanted to be able to balance the positive with the negative. However, the truth is that I had to literally force myself to keep reading this book, and I ended up finally giving up at the halfway point.

I received this book as an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

So uh, I feel like even though this book is clearly written with the queer community in mind, it uh felt homophobic. The characters were all unlikable. They deadnamed the trans character almost immediately upon introduction. The dialogue was cringe and not believable. I wanted to love this bc queer D&D sounds right up my alley but this was not it.

As a bisexual that plays a lot of table top RPGs I was so intrigued by the cover and blerb of this book. It checked all the boxes of something I should love.
LGBTQ+ characters :Check
Nerds playing D&D : Check
Campy romance: Check
But while it had all the makings of something great it was somewhat of a letdown. So for the good parts. The characters both in and out of the game were well done. Some of the scenes had dialogue that I'm pretty sure ive said durring a campaign session. The atmosphere of the gaming sessions and the in game world was very well done. Both of those compiled it felt very reminiscent of evenings spent crowded around a gaming table with my friends. And I loved that! The part that I had a hard tine with was the plot. It pacing felt very off and there were a few plot lines that did not feel like the fit in with the rest of the book.

Overall this was a good quick read. If you are looking for something with campy romance and some fun D&D adventure then I would give this one a go.

You can't call it an LGBTQ book in all seriousness, and then turn around and deadname your trans woman character within the first few pages of the book, and repeatedly quote poisonous TERF Rowling. You also can't expect me to finish your bigoted book, even if it was granted to me by #NetGalley and the publisher as a digital advanced copy. There's literally no one I would feel comfortable recommending this book to, and I am so disappointed, as I was pulled in by a cute cover, and was so excited to read a book that involves the confluence of queerness and geeky gaming--But this book is not it.

This is a book about early adulthood and establishing self in your mid-to-late twenties. A common experience in the LGBTQ community that goes down much easier for straight folks in their late teens and early twenties. Often, untangling cultural norms and expectations around gender and sexuality as an LGBTQ person takes more time and gets more pushback socially and emotionally, depending on our experiences with homophobia.
Henderson opens with the main character, Ben, looking for his dice bag while heading out for the weekly Thursday Dungeons and Dragons game in the backroom of Readmore Comics. Its description reminded me of Houston’s Third Planet Sci-Fi Superstore, with more real estate, minus Readmore’s insistence on a smelly gorilla costume for coaxing customers inside. Henderson uses this particular detail well as a way to remind us of their connection to Readmore even when they aren’t in the backroom. You don’t really forget a gorilla mask when it enters a scene.

Comic enthusiasts clog the aisles of Readmore and peruse other heroic wares before closing when Valerie, a fellow DND player, and comic store employee, kicks them out each week before their Thursday game. One in particular, curiously, believes himself to be a vampire as he sprints away in a cape hissing at her. This is just the introduction to the DND world we will be invited into as these friends all over the gender and sexuality spectrum engage in an evening of regular RPG gaming. Much like my previous review of Be Dazzled (Ryan La Sala, Sourcebooks Fire, 2021) costumes and characters take a prominent place. We are introduced to two sides of each member of the ensemble, their real-world selves, and their more fantastical personas.