Elements of this were sooooo good - the flirty banter, the tension, the he falls first. I loved the premise of this and even though there were quite a few side characters, it felt well developed and thought out. There were elements though that just weren't super tight - the third act 'separation' (not quite break-up) didn't work as well as it could have and the relationship development between Rose and William felt like it was missing something (the initial spark was there but it didn't feel like it carried through all of the way). I can see the potential and really want to read the next book by the author.

This was such a cute book! Exactly what I needed and I binged it in a day! I loved all the game and LOTR references. I love that their friend group made time every week for game night even with their busy life schedules. Rose and William are a great couple. The enemies to hey maybe our hate is love friendship to love evolvement was so nice to read. I definitely would have liked more conversations between them to fully solidify the relationship aspect though. For reference: there’s lots of kissing in this book but nothing spicy, alluding to sex but not full actual scenes. I also liked that we got talks about sexual harassment in the work place. How Rose doubted herself, how other males made her doubt herself and so many thoughts on maybe it wasn’t actually harassment but finally having the courage to speak up. Really realistic and appreciated.

Would definitely read more of this author!!

Playing Flirty is a fun rom com that you can read in one sitting. It’s predictable but has great characters. Rose and William had a believable connection and I loved their friend group dynamics!

Rose Marie Jones is all about Game Night with her friends. Most of the week is spent with her dividing her time between her demanding job as an investment analyst and her working on her MBA. She has a boyfriend, but he’s busy with his marketing job and sometimes they have a hard time connecting. But Game Night with her roommate Neema, her work friend (and Neema’s boyfriend) Shaun, Shaun’s half-brother William, and her boyfriend Patrick when he can get away from work, is the highlight of Rose’s week.

But when Rose sees a competition for board game creators, her heart skips a beat. As a kid, she dreamed of creating board games and started making one of her own. But she’ll need to finish it if she wants to enter the contest, and the best person to help her with that is William, her gaming nemesis. He’s always teasing her, and they tend to be evenly matched in competitions. But he created and sold a popular video game, so he has the most experience in creating a game that people actually want to play.

Rose and William get stuck spending more time together as they work on Rose’s game, but also because they are the Maid of Honor and Best Man in Neema and Shaun’s wedding. As the game starts to come together, sparks fly between the two, but Rose already has a five-year plan, and William isn’t on it. But then, neither is feeling increasingly uncomfortable in her job or feeling distant from Patrick. Rose finds herself rolling the dice on her future, but will she figure out how to win at life? Or will she find herself back at the start line all alone?

Playing Flirty is a nerdy rom com about game enthusiasts who fall in love. There is a lot of clever banter with these smart characters, and a lot of board game and video game talk for gamers who love rom coms. This is a slow burn with an inevitable conclusion, but the trips around the board to get to the happy ever after is a charming journey.

I really enjoyed Playing Flirty. It’s not perfect, but there is a lot to love about this book. There were a couple of situations where abusive relationships were glossed over, and I think the story would have been stronger had those situations either been left out or resolved more realistically, but I did still have a great time with this book. There are some laugh out loud moments, and Rose’s parents, modern-day hippies, were absolutely charming. I definitely enjoyed the gaming aspects, and I thought the relationship between Rose and William was very sweet. Overall, I enjoyed it and I think other board game nerds will too.

Egalleys for Playing Flirty were provided by Forever through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Playing Flirty by Shameez Patel!

Thank you to Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and NetGalley for the e-ARC of this title to read and review. "Playing Flirty" started off with a really great premise filled with romance and good nerdy fun, but ultimately wasn't for me. I think the plot was ambitious and tried to tackle a lot of different topics -- from the romance to the friends' wedding to the board game nights to professional game development ambitions to breakups to rivaling half-brothers to spreadsheets filled of future growth milestone plans and MBA work to sexual harassment faced at work to... literally it goes on and on -- and then I wanted it to tackle *even more* -- like growing self-confidence out of bad relationships and what it's like to be a young woman in the game creator field. Then ultimately, I didn't think it was able to pull off most of these side quests completely. It felt like a lot was happening and also like nothing was happening at the same time, like this friend group could have had lots of rich inner lives and challenges but they still somehow didn't. I think each character ended up giving me the ick in a very specific way. Our main character Rose felt a bit boring and juvenile, so I wasn't convinced that she was actually this incredible talent and someone I wanted to root for in romance and career.

Rose Marie Jones and William Ashdern couldn't stand each other. Well, really their competitiveness kept them from being able to co-exist peacefully. Rose is in a dead end relationship. Their is no spark, they barely talk, and he's always working. He does nothing to encourage her. When Rose and William start spending more time together to plan wedding festivities for her best friend who is marrying his half-brother, their prickly outer armors begin to fall away. Now William is helping her get her board game ready for a contest and they're sneaking around behind everyone's back.

Such a great romcom with a little bit of melancholy. I didn't like how Rose's boyfriend had NO CLUE how creative and intelligent she was. I was surprised at how, after so many years of be adversaries, Rose and William became partners and fed off each other's creativity and intelligence.

I received an advance copy of this book at my request and voluntarily left this review.

This was a great romance. It's a rom-com so it follows the typical formula. I liked how competitive the main characters were without getting mean or prodding at one another. Their friend group was fun and supportive as well. This was a super nerdy and cute romance. While our MMC has plenty of brooding to go around, he is also supportive and a great love interest. I definitely would read another book by this author.

I was so happy to read a romance book written by a south asian author that is so nuanced and uncommon!
I loved the whole nerdy, gaming, hippy and broody vibes.
I enjoyed this debut!

A fairly predicable rom com. That was still refreshing as the hero wasn't a jock or an alpha male which has seemed to become the norm in rom coms. Instead he's a loveable nerd.

I enjoyed this book! I thought the relationship between Rose and William was so cute. I loved how they went from hating each other to falling for each other. I also really enjoyed their friend group. The connection between the two at the end was super cute.

Every week, Rose looks forward to game night. For one night a week, she can forget about everything and just focus on her friends and the board game in front of them. It’s the one place her high competitive nature takes over, especially when she is playing against William. As her best friend’s half-brother, he’s always been her arch-nemesis. While he might be tall and handsome, she always get flustered around him and wants nothing more than to beat him at his game every time. When Rose has a chance to enter a board game contest to show off the game she invented years ago, she really knew there was only one person who could help her. Can she put her hatred aside and have William help her achieve her goal or will she risk it all and maybe even open herself up to risking it all.

This book put two things I love so perfectly together. I absolutely loved the board game tie in to this romance. Every character was perfect to the game and brought exactly what they needed to the plot. You can’t help but cheer Rose and William on to the finish. With how this one finished, I’d love to see a sequel to finish out their story.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the arc of this book. All opinions are my own.

I really loved this one! I am not the best at writing reviews sometimes, but sometimes books take you by surprise and this one did just that. I got invested a few chapters in and couldn't put it done. It was so good! I highly recommend this one.

I could not put this book down and loved every part of it. I loved William and Rose and their love for each other. They’re there for each other during hard times and worked hard to be together. I also loved the game nights with their best friends and love of board games. William’s support of Rose’s dreams was just so heart warming! Everything about their rivals to lovers story was perfect to me. Will absolutely be reading more by Shameez Patel in the future!

Ok, Playing Flirty was super cute! It’s the perfect nerdy romance about game nights, found family, and playing for keeps. Rose is on the outs with her long-time boyfriend, and she’s struggling at work, but game nights and the friends who share her passion are the bright spots in her week–even William, the broody brother of one of her best friends, who is also her fiercest competition. She has been working on a board game idea since she was a teen, and after she learns about a board game competition, she’s finally ready to share it with her friends and enter it into the contest. William, who is a video game developer, offers to help her polish her game before she submits it, and when they start to spend more time together, they quickly realize that maybe in this game called love, they can both be winners.

This has some great micro-tropes, including one of my favorites–caretaking. My nerdy little heart loved every page of this fun, flirty romance. Except for the parts with her ex. He was a jerk and he never deserved her. This is perfect for fans of Kristy Boyce (but who want an adult nerdy romance) and Jen DeLuca--and for anyone who's ever loved playing games.

Thank you to Forever for my ARC.

This one is for the nerds! Whether you love cosplay, D&D, board games, or game nights with friends, you’re going to love this new romance release! Playing Flirty follows a group of friends through their weekly game nights and when our main character enters a board game competition, she finds an unlikely ally!

I was blown away by how authentic, sweet, funny, and honest this story was. I was captured from start to finish and highly recommended adding it to your TBR ASAP! This was the easiest ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’ve given out this year!

This book should have worked for me! It has so many of my favorite things - but it just fell a bit flat and felt a bit too young for me to properly enjoy.

It was a cute romcom in the midst of it all, but there's many things that didn't work for me. Rose was a boring character. William was very one dimensional. It was very slow and nothing happening it parts, it just felt underwhelming to me.

This was a cute romance. I bad to grit my teeth through the shitty boyfriend and the playful enemies to lovers tension at the beginning felt a touch immature compared to the age of the characters. Ultimately though I liked how the romance progressed and the way the main conflicts were handled, although I wouldn’t have been to see a certain best friend groveling a little more.

I really love a strong found family element and this friend group definitely has that. I would love to see more of Lincoln…but if this is where it ends, I think this is a fun read!

4.25 stars// If there's one thing Rose can rely on, it's her mapped-out life plan- when she'll get engaged, when she'll get promoted, etc. Yet, with her overworking boyfriend putting their love on the back burner and her boss being an absolute creep, Rose knows she can rely on one comfort each week: game night. One time a week she and her friends gather to play board games and leave all the bad stuff outside her best friend's apartment, not including her nemesis, William. Every time they are in a room together, shade is being thrown left and right and if William deigns to grace his presence on the game board it's game on between the two of them. At the request of William's brother, Rose and Will call a truce and begin to play nice instead before it starts turning into something more than nice. Rose begins to start a journey of listening to what she wants and that includes asking for Will's help on her own board game she desires to enter in a competition. As they grow closer, the stakes in their playing nice game get higher with the limit nowhere in sight.

I adored this book and was so happy to see a fellow WOC nerdy gamer. The romance between Rose and Will builds at such a slow and good pace that you can't help, but cheer for them at the climax (quite literally). The stakes of a forbidden romance with a best friend's brother were truly the perfect equation for this found family and getting to see their dynamics at all stages of Rose & Will's relationship. Shameez Patel is someone I will be keeping an eye out for future releases from and I would highly recommend this romance to those of you who love a tease and a slow burn!

Thank you to NetGalley, Forever (Grand Central Pub), and Shameez Patel for this ARC