Book Review - Role Playing by Cathy Yardley

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Title: Role Playing

Author: Cathy Yardley

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Montlake

Publication Date: 1st July 2023

Rating: 5 Stars

From Cathy Yardley, author of Love, Comment, Subscribe, comes an emotional rom-com about two middle-aged gamers who grow their online connection into an IRL love story.

Maggie is an unapologetically grumpy forty-eight-year-old hermit. But when her college-aged son makes her a deal—he’ll be more social if she does the same—she can’t refuse. She joins a new online gaming guild led by a friendly healer named Otter. So that nobody gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch.

Otter is Aiden, a fifty-year-old optimist using the guild as an emotional outlet from his family drama caring for his aging mother while his brother plays house with Aiden’s ex-fiancée.

Bogwitch and Otter become fast virtual friends, but there’s a catch. Bogwitch thinks Otter is a college student. Otter assumes Bogwitch is an octogenarian.

When they finally meet face to face—after a rocky, shocking start—the unlikely pair of sunshine and stormy personalities grow tentatively closer. But Maggie’s previous relationships have left her bitter, and Aiden’s got a complicated past of his own.

Everything’s easier online. Can they make it work in real life?

This book spoke to me on so many levels, but it especially appealed to my inner game geek. I only hope I am still as into games as I currently am, when I get to Maggie's age, although I suspect I will be, as they are a part of me. 

And all the ingame chat, and talk of raiding guilds, boss runs, loot, and roles such as tanks and healers is all such familiar language to me and reminded me of my own time raiding while playing a massive MMORPG for a few years that I was addicted to. 

Thus I could completely understand and empathise with Maggie wanting to not necessarily be an obvious female gamer, and I loved how she dealt with the youngsters in the guild. 

And Aiden is just lovely, he grew on me big time, he is struggling with his family and it turns out a whole lot more too.  Both are adamant they have no interest at all in dating generally and given they grew to be friends initially online, without having any idea who the other really is, the eventual meeting was gold! 

Neither Aiden or Maggie are overly social beings, much to the confusion to just about everyone in their small town, and many humorous attempts to "make them more normal" were things that the two leads could have done without. 

I loved seeing how they connected both online and in real life and was hooked on finding out just what would happen.  I couldn't get enough of this book, and I'm surprised I've never encountered this authors wonderful writing before.  Something I will clearly need to change in the future, if these are the sorts of books she writes. 

Utterly fabulous, loved every second of it. 

Thank you to Montlake and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.