Dungeons and Drama

If you like slow burn, fake dating and high school romances, you’ve come to the right place! The story itself is relatively predictable, but that’s the case with most romances and didn’t bother me at all. Since Nathan and Riley are both very stubborn and expected nothing but the fake relationship and therefore only fake feelings from the other person until the end, there were a lot of “screaming, giggling, kicking my feet” moments, like: OMG their hands brushed against each other and Riley got a tingle in her stomach! And I live for moments like that! It’s very refreshing in contrast to the many dark romance novels out there. I really felt their love for musicals and pen and paper games and it made my nerd heart happy how well researched the information was! The only thing I would have liked was to read from Nathan’s point of view. The whole story is written from Riley’s perspective, which is interesting and important (especially for the musical part). But I would have liked to see what Nathan thinks about the whole thing. But that’s just a “nice-to-have”, the book is great without it! Since they kiss at the very most, I would recommend the book for ages 14 and up, or for 12-year-olds who read a lot.

The story itself was kind of obvious, a classic fake dating trope, and it was clear for me where this was going - but still, I was giggling like a teenage girl when feelings got involved and I loved all the nerdy references from DnD to Monty Python. Sometimes it was a bit over the top but hey, they are still High School kids. And there was even character development! I liked this book a lot, just 4 stars because it was very predictable. I’d still recommend it, if you are looking for something lighthearted for in-between.