Review: Role Playing by Cathy Yardley

Role Playing by Cathy Yardley

Publisher: Montlake

Publication Date: July 1, 2023

Library Purchase: YES 100% YES!!!

Synopsis

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?

Review

I'm calling it now. This is going to be one of my top romance reads of 2024, if not thee top romance read of 2024! Not only do we have two main characters who are middle aged, they feel like middle aged millennials if that makes any sense. Maggie is basically a hot mess. She works from home, wears primarily sweatpants, never wants to leave home and plays video games on the computer. She struggles with anxiety but when you've pushed one too many buttons, she will take off her earrings and throw hands. 

Aiden has been forced into his rightful place as the oldest, left to fight with his elderly, MEAN AF MOM. Like, she's shockingly mean. Quite frankly mom or no, I would have left her to fend for herself because she was uncalled for. And here we have saint Aiden, taking all his mom crap while his brother pretends that nothing is wrong and all he asks for is time to be left alone to play his video game. 

I love these two. This is one of the few adult romance novels that I feel like I can relate too. So often the main character are way more put together than I'll ever be and the books always talk about their marriage, and friendships, and kids and all of that in a way that can be really unrelatable to the every growing group of decidedly child free people who's lives more closely resemble that of a 16 year with a fully developed prefrontal cortex and all the frustration of someone who's paid their student loans three times over, and yet we're still in 6 figures. While that wasn't exactly the story of these two main characters, the vibes were right! 

This book scratched every, single, itch I have, including some sexual identity that so many in the world pretend doesn't exist. I'm literally afraid to read any more adult romance because I can't imagine anything topping this!!