Fat lesbian main character who falls for her online roleplay best friend? Yes freaking please.

This is another one of those books that falls into the category of "it wasn't an audiobook so it took me ages to get through it and then I ended up just listening to the audiobook anyway" So here we are months later than I was supposed to finish this and I'm so happy I finally was able to finish. This is a messy chaotic story about nerdy teenagers feeling their feelings and living their life.

I really enjoyed the concept of the story and just the reminder that teenagers are imperfect messy chaotic humans who make mistakes and deserve to make mistakes was really great. I really liked her relationship with her neighbor best friend as well as all of her online friendships. I think all of the relationship dynamics were well done and complex in this story. No one was perfect and no one was without fault.

I do think some of the on page roleplay scenes weren't necessary to be honest. I just don't know that it added a ton to the story that couldn't have been done in a different way.

However, I would definitely recommend this one and it is a great contemporary YA!

This was such a fun read.
Not only is there a healthy dose of hilarity, but there are some very real feelings that Cass has to confront in both her relationships with her friends and also with herself.
I absolutely adored Cass and her friends- real life and online.

Out of Character has:
>> Queer Rep
>> Anxiety Rep
>> Body Positivity
>> Nerdy Goodness
>> Bookish Love
>> Found Family
>> Delicious Tater Tot Hotdish

I highly recommend giving this YA Queer RomCom a read; I don’t think you will regret it!

though i’m only rating this three out of five stars, it was definitely very cute and hard for me to pull away from. i think that there were some moments that pulled me away from the story and that i just found hard to believe such as how quickly the main character and a few of the other characters would make up, her mom saying that she was moving that day, and so on. i know that these things do happen to actual people but it just felt very rushed in written form. i would still highly recommend it and read it again.

Cassidy is a nerdy, plus-sized, queer girl in her senior year of high school. While her life is going fine, crushing on a girl from school and spending time with her best friend Tate, she has a secret online life role-playing as a character from her favorite sci-fi/fantasy novels. When things progress with her crush, she begins to wonder if her online life should stay secret, and if the people involved with it mean more to her than she is willing to admit. This is a great book for fans of the Once Upon a Con series by Ashley Poston, specifically Geekerella.

I love seeing books about queer nerds, and the fact that she is also plus-sized and loves her body is amazing. I think the author does a good job of balancing all these facets of her identities without making one seem more important to who she is.

The role playing aspect of the book was enjoyable to read about and was mixed throughout the story. However, it would’ve been nice to have a a summary of the franchise at some point since the reader is thrown right in to lore.

Her friendship with Tate is one of my favorite parts of this book. Tate is the perfect best friend. He is able to be emotionally vulnerable with Cass, make her laugh, be a star football player, and juggle a girlfriend while not making her feel like a third wheel! Everyone needs a Tate in their lives.

It is a young adult novel, so some teenage angst can be expected, especially when the plot inherently leads to lying as she keeps her online and in person life separate. But as another anxious human, I can understand how her thoughts could’ve spiraled. I think the target audience will not mind the angst or lying.

Pick this book up for a slice of life story with lots of nerdy friendship and self-discovery.

Thank you to Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins, the author, and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was released on February 7, 2023.

Cass Williams has a secret life. By day, she’s a high school student. And any other time, she’s roleplaying as Captain Aresha from the Tide Wars books with her online besties, including Rowan, who writes for Aresha’s girlfriend. It’s a path Cass has been down before, but she can’t pull herself away—not when this tight-knit group of fellow RPers is what’s keeping her going after her mother abruptly moves halfway across the country to live with another man, leaving Cass and her father behind. Things escalate as Cass starts dating the girl she’s had a crush on forever, her grades slip, and she tries to navigate both her growing feelings for Rowan and the changes in her life, both online and off.

I can see so much of my middle and high school self in certain aspects of this book—namely (and I’ll just cut to the chase here) Cass’s online roleplaying addiction. There was a time when young me had to be grounded from Neopets and then, when permitted online again, had a one hour time limit that I tried my fiercest to circumvent every single day. Not to mention the Shur’tugal fan wiki Inheritance Encyclopedia, which I checked first thing after school all the time. And then in high school, there was the constant writing of original and fan fiction, with multiple stories going on many pieces of paper that I swapped with a friend between classes. Sometimes during class.

All this to say, Jenna Miller did a freaking amazing job capturing the draw of roleplay, as well as how and why some people might hide that it’s a passion of theirs, the path to addiction to it, and how all of that can complicate your life and friendships. I’m pretty sure Miller was so successful with this depiction because she’s an RPer herself—I feel like someone who hasn’t had this kind of experience would come close to realistically portraying a character who’s obsessed with roleplaying but wouldn’t quite get some of the details—or feelings—right. Miller really knows what she’s doing (duh!), and I just love how evident it is that this is a huge part of her own life. And I LOVED the roleplay interludes between chapters!

I’m also so impressed by all the character relationships and how complex and true-to-life each of them felt. Whether it was Cass and Taylor’s burgeoning relationship and their attempts to connect, Cass and Rowan’s friendship and more with its ups and downs and fights and apologies, Cass and the other RP kids complaining about one of their own who also keeps them a secret but barely comes around, or Cass and her offline BFF Tate’s effortlessly supportive and close friendship, each felt as if it could have played out in the halls around me back in 2012. Except, you know, with Discord and more openly queer people. To which I say, hell yeah.

Out of Character is so well done, former-internet-kids-now-adults. It gets us, and the intensity of high school relationships and friendships. So you should probably return the favor and get it for your shelf.

8 Books by Minnesota Authors We’re Excited for in 2023
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A really deep and affecting story, I loved the characters and their relationships to each other and what that represented. A great exploration of addiction, abandonment and the lasting effects of both.

First of all I would like to thank the Hear Our Voices tour for selecting me as part of the tour for this book and for Harper Collins for finally listening to their Union. Now we can finally have this review. There will be spoilers so proceed with caution.

Overall, this book is a 4.5. But as I read it I felt very seen. Jenna and I have been conversation friends on Instagram for a few months now and she knows that I’m from Wisconsin. We are also around the same age and that means we definitely were on the internet at the same time.

Out of Character is what Fangirl wishes it could be. That was one of the first books I read that made me feel seen as a fangirl. However, Out of Character is very much a LGBTQ+ book and full of nerdy fandom references (and hot dish).

Cass drove me wild sometimes which means she was absolutely written like a teenager. Is she in the wrong sometimes, especially with her girlfriend for not telling her everything, yes. But she was also a teenager. Teens aren’t supposed to be perfect and for some reason readers want perfect teens on paper when in reality teenagers are a mess. I sure as hell didn’t know everything at age 17.

An aspect I adored about the book was online community. I have been in various online communities since I was young. In the book, Cass has a group of close friends from her RP group and they constantly chat. But they also are slowly drifting away. That is sadly natural in online spaces. Our interests usually bring us together but as our interest change, we have the choice to stay with the friends we have made or just ditch them. A character does just that and that truly happens in online communities. It’s happened with my own circle of friends.

I also enjoyed the IRL world, especially Cass’s relationship with Tate. I adored Tate. He became my favorite character because he just got it. And Cass should have realized earlier that she could have been her whole nerdy self with Tate and he wouldn’t have cared. He still would have loved her regardless because that’s what friends are.

Cass’s relationship with Taylor is, believe it or not, very realistic. Sometimes when we find ourselves in a relationship, we have an image of the partner and we want to hold on to that image when in reality they aren’t like that. Their relationship progressed exactly how you would think it would as we are reading in Cass’s mind. But the ending? Perfect.

I also want to touch on the parenting situation. Cass’s life collapsed with her mom leaving and parents getting a divorce. That is absolutely life shattering for a lot of people. Cass’s grades took a huge tumble and that happens. We all process things differently. Did her mom handle this well? No. Her dad? No. Cass? No. But by the end of the book you got a sense of healing.

And now let’s move on to the representation. First of all, Cass is a lesbian and you can tell it took her a long while to get there herself. Cass is also fat. In society, we praise those who are skinny and fit the normal box. But being a lesbian and fat in the nerd world? You’re treated like you are worthless. This still goes on in various fandom communities. However, Cass truly found herself a network, a found family, who supports her. Well, not Cari. She can go. I feel like if I had this book when I was younger, I would have seen myself even earlier than when I did in my late twenties.

And now to Rowan. Cass’s feelings for Rowan come to a head when she has to grapple with what would happen if they acted on them. It has happened to so many of us (including me). When you’re online, there’s distance between you. But when you meet the person face to face, everything can change. And yet, I loved what happened because I know it has happened to others before.

Other things to note: this was a very Midwest book. The hot dish mentions, Target, Culver’s, and a stop in Madison, not to mention the chapter in Chicago brought me so much joy. I’ve been to both Minneapolis and Chicago a lot in my life time. And yes, Mall of America is featured. And for those of you who are not from the Midwest, Target was founded in Minnesota. It’s based in Minneapolis. Also in Downtown Minneapolis they have the Skyway system which a godsend during the cold winter months. And yes, Minnesota Nice is a real thing. It is not made up.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book but I also knew my own personal background in being a nerd (especially someone who was very involved with the Glee fandom on Tumblr from 2011-2012) would help me connect with this book. There are various ways to be a nerd. Some might not connect to this book while others will.

I can’t wait to see what else Jenna has in store for us. For a debut, this was fantastic.

And thank you all for reading. My gushing is over. For now. Until we get a new Jenna Miller book.

Cass is seventeen years old and could be doing better in school, but the most important thing in her life is her online roleplaying group for the Tide Wars books. When her mom unexpectedly leaves her and her dad to fend for themselves, she falls back heavily on her RP at the expense of her school and her new girlfriend. She’s never told anyone about her online life, and for several reasons she thinks she never will. But when one of her RP friends starts to become a bigger part of her off-screen life, Cass realizes that her lies are about to catch up with her.

I was excited by the concept of this book – it’s always fun to see nerdier hobbies like roleplaying incorporated into YA fiction. Between chapters there were excerpts of Cass’s RP scenes with her group; while I enjoyed their inclusion at first, the scenes became longer and occurred more frequently, which I felt detracted a bit from my enjoyment of the read. Cass was not a likeable protagonist, but this was largely due to issues relating to her addiction, discussed below. The other characters were okay. They were written well enough to not detract from the work, but not well enough to be engaging or realistic. I also disliked the subplot relating to Cass’s mom leaving; it wasn’t incorporated well at all, and her mom was poorly written, making the whole subplot feel clunky and disjointed.

I enjoyed how the author represented Cass’s inability to turn off her screen and how her real life suffered because of her online life. The fact that the author chose addiction to online activities rather than drugs or alcohol was interesting and well done. I would have liked to see a bit more of a discussion surrounding Cass’s past addiction to gaming/online activity: it was mentioned in passing several times but not incorporated well into the story. Since Cass was addicted to her online life, she made stupid and awful choices relating to the other people present in her life – while this made it impossible to like her as a person, it was a good representation of how being addicted to online activities can negatively impact a person’s personality.

This was an easy read that was a good representation of how addiction can impact someone’s life and those around them. I did enjoy how body positive this work was as well as the fact that the drama revolved around online addiction rather than the Queer Community – this well done and felt atypical for a YA work. My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is a cute story that teenage me would have LOVED. I loved the anxiety rep and the importance of online communities in Out of Character. I was not a big fan of the plot overall, but I could definitely see a teen girl making those choices.

This is such a beautiful, body-positive story about first love and a delightfully diverse exploration of what it means to find your place. As Cass tries to navigate her online life vs. her real life, and her story starts to spiral out of her control, her struggle to make the right choices is authentic and moving. What’s more, her relationships with her best friend Rowan and her “dream girlfriend,” Taylor, are so well-developed and show us that sometimes what we build up in our heads as the “ideal” is rarely the reality. These are complex, nuanced characters navigating tough situations with no easy answers, and walking through alongside them is a true joy. We need more stories like this!

*4.25 Stars*

Cass Williams is not doing too great, her parents’ relationship has been on the rocks since forever which has affected her school work and she has just one irl friend. And none of these people know about her “secret life” of role playing her favorite Tide Wars character and the friends she made through this hobby of hers. And then, things get even worse somehow…

This was a bit slow at first and I had trouble staying focused on it, especially because of all the terrible decisions the MC made but after a little while, I really got sucked in and really really enjoyed it. I really liked all the fandoms aspects and the talk of online friendships. I also liked how flawed Cass was and all the mistakes she made along the way, it made her more interesting to me. The side characters were also all pretty flawed and they even got on my nerves sometimes but it wasn’t a hindrance.
Overall, this was a pretty good read with several interesting aspects and I will definitely be reading more books by this author.

Fine. I wasn’t sold on the writing at first, but it grew on me.

I think Tide Wars is a terrible name for a book series personally but whatever. I did really love that this was about online rp because that’s something I was really into when i was younger, but that was about everything I liked about this book.

I'm not sure if this has been changed for the final book, but the mc kept saying her “private server with someone” when talking about discord DMs. I don’t think anyone would ever say that and it really threw me every time it was said. Additionally, there was this atrocious sounding dish she used as like a litmus test of whether a person was worth knowing which was frankly very disturbing, but I guess it works out fine because I would hate the totdish and I don't want to be friends with her.

Overall as I read this book, the main feeling i got was, Eliza and Her Monsters but the cheap knockoff version.

💡 Disclosure: I received a free early review copy of this novel via NetGalley.

📖 I had basically forgotten about my role playing days until Cassidy Williams and her friend group yeeted back to 2008. (Back in the day when we used Goodreads for role play, because Discord didn’t even exist yet.) It was really fun to read the scenes interspersed, and seeing the OoC double parentheses again melted my heart a little with nostalgia.

📖 The cast of characters here is great. I especially love Cass’s dad, who is Just Doing His Best. And I love, love, love having a plus size queer nerd protagonist who is totally at peace with her size and her queerness. That gives her so much more room to overthink everything else!

📖 This is a great YA book, and I’d totally recommend it in a heartbeat to people in the actual audience. I’ll definitely give a copy to the queer teen in my life and tell her about my role play forays! I wouldn’t say this is a good candidate for crossover appeal to adult audiences.

📖 For an adult audience, I found it a little too… slick. Everyone talks the way they should, unless they say the “wrong” thing for a plot reason, at which point they make up for it. The surface tension of the perfectly-full cup of water never bursts. It took me a bit longer to get into the writing, which I think was re-acclimating my brain to that YA slickness (which is different but similar to the too-slick feeling some adult romances have, too).

📚 I can’t wait to put this on my list of easy gifts for teens. Finally, I’ll know at least ONE thing that the teen in my life will love!

The HCP union has reached an agreement with Harper Collins, so here's my review!
Out of Character is about a fat teen lesbian going through the tough changes that come with parents divorcing, as well as dealing with a role-playing addiction.
I was so excited for this book. I mean, a book about a fat teen lesbian who loves fandom and role playing? That’s literally a description of me as a teen! Sadly, it did not live up to the hype for a number of reasons, but let’s start with what I did like.
Firstly, Cass, the main character, is unapologetically a fat lesbian. She loves her body, and never once thinks negatively about it. She is seen as gorgeous by other characters, with no remarks of about her ‘being pretty for a fat girl.’ I really loved all of Cass’s friendships, especially with Tate, it was the lesbian and football jock bff duo I never knew we needed. Cass's relationship with her parents is also very well written, especially her relationship with her dad, which was just so wonderful and caring. It was interesting to have the stereotype of the absent father flipped on its head and instead have her mother be absent. I really related to the way she had to hide her fandom/role-play obsession, as I had to do the same at one point (for different reasons, but the emotions are the same.)
Now for what I didn’t like: Cass, like most teenagers IRL who are figuring things out, is a super flawed main character. She lies, hides secrets and is generally a pretty shitty friend and partner for most of the book. She dates Taylor because she looks like an IRL version of a character from her favourite book series, but when she realizes that Taylor is an actual person, not this fictionalized version made up in her head, she starts to treat Taylor pretty badly. I absolutely loathed this part of the book, as it was just so stressful to read. In fact, I spent most of the book being stressed out, which is not ideal. She was just so awful to Taylor with all the lying, and she wasn’t great to Rowan either, even though it had a happy ending. I wish books like this could have more positive lesbian rep, instead of “Here’s a teen lesbian who treats people pretty badly and lies a ton but it all ends up fine in the end and everyone forgives her!”. Because people aren’t as forgiving in real life, and it’s never okay to use someone the way Cass used Taylor (even though I don’t think she knew that’s what she was doing.) She wanted a girlfriend so badly that she sort of forced the relationship to work, and she thought she had a crush on Taylor, but she should’ve broke it off as soon as she realized that that wasn’t the case. I just worry that this book will send the wrong message to young lesbians who might read this book. That it's okay to use people to figure yourself out. Cass should've been honest with Taylor from the start.
Overall, this book was a 3 stars for me, neither great nor bad, but kind of in the middle.

Thank you Net Galley and Jenna Miller for giving me the opportunity to read Out Of Character! A lively, YA, queer, plus size positive book! I am happy that the publishers decided to use the word lesbian instead of constantly saying queer in the released version. Lesbian is not a bad word!! Overall a great book that I would read again :)

Thank you to NetGalley and Quill Tree Books for this arc.

I knew I would like this book based on the summary, and would love provide a deeper review. However, I am standing in solidity with the HarperCollins Union strike. This review is redacted while HarperCollins workers are on strike. The real review will be up on my social platforms and edited here when HarperCollins' workers' demands are met.

I'm really happy books like Out of Character exist for today's youth. While YA is not usually my genre of choice, I will definitely be seeking out future work by Jenna Miller.

This book! I literally feel like this book was written for me! I am a fat lesbian with anxiety and an addiction disorder who also happened to fall for a role play buddy. I related to every bit of this book.
I have never seen a book talk about addiction disorder in a way that didn't involve alcohol or drugs and seeing it in this book was amazing. I've always been prone to addiction and character talking about her issues with it and how she has to be careful with certain things was amazing. I hope other teens with these issues can relate to this.
I don't want to give much else aways just know this book is totally worth it. Please please support this amazing debut author and check out this book.

Cass is proudly fat and openly queer, but one thing she’s secretive about is the roleplaying community for her favorite books that she’s a part of online. I wasn’t super familiar with roleplaying before this read - it’s basically like writing fanfiction, but you write as a certain character, and you have scenes with other people who give other characters a voice. It seems fun and creative!! It’s a good outlet for Cass, who is dealing with family issues and dating issues.

But it’s not all great - she’s had issues with computer addiction before, and she’s sliding back into them. Her grades are tanking and college deadlines are looming. And she’s finally dating her longtime crush, but is beginning to realize she has feelings for a member of her roleplay group

Cass being so accepting of her fat body is so important to me. There’s a scene where Cass and her irl bestie need Halloween costumes, and they’re at Target, and Cass is like “welp not gonna find anything for me here”… something people who aren’t fat can take for granted, the simple ability to walk into a store and buy a well-fitting outfit off the rack. It just feels so normal to read about a character who feels the same thing I feel on a regular basis, and that feeling of seeing myself on page is why I’m so passionate about representation for ALL people. Everyone deserves to read from someone who has shared their experiences and validates what they feel 🥹