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relin's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Outing and Sexual content
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Alcohol
Minor: Death of parent
Divorce is a large importance to the story.mels_reading_log's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This is a friends to lovers romance where the people in the couple are 50ish year old introverts who met through an online gaming guild. I love a romance novel that gives me a couple that’s not just young, hot and cis! This book is all about accepting yourself and finding your people who will love you no matter what.
Graphic: Death of parent, Outing, Homophobia, Biphobia, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Panic attacks/disorders, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail and Grief
claire_riach's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Moderate: Homophobia, Outing, and Biphobia
Minor: Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, and Acephobia/Arophobia
annahamburger's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Graphic: Biphobia, Mental illness, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Homophobia
Moderate: Outing, Cursing, Toxic relationship, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, and Xenophobia
Minor: Violence, Death of parent, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Cancer, Chronic illness, Emotional abuse, Dysphoria, Medical content, Abandonment, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Car accident, Dementia, Pregnancy, and Racism
sdupont's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Biphobia, Homophobia, and Outing
Moderate: Acephobia/Arophobia, Body shaming, Death of parent, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Car accident and Racism
bibliomania_express's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I absolutely loved Maggie and Aiden and their slow-burn romance. Maggie deals with social anxiety and introversion, but she's also fierce and unafraid to be herself. She tells off so many people in this book and I absolutely loved it. Especially the scene at the wedding. And Aiden - he's so kind and thoughtful, but had been shit on by his family for so long. He tries to do well by his horrid, homophobic mother, and I was cheering for him as he learned to be more assertive.
This book also shows how much knowledge can help people struggling with their identities. Aiden is on the ace spectrum, but he has frequently felt like something is wrong with him since he didn't have the label. Yardley does a fantastic job showing how much having the language to speak about himself means to Aiden, even in his early fifties.
This book has been on my radar for a while now, so I'm glad I finally picked it up.
Some content warnings for homophobia/biphobia/acephobia (all challenged by the text), misogyny (also challenged), discussions of hospice care and elder care.
Graphic: Acephobia/Arophobia and Biphobia
Moderate: Dementia
Minor: Car accident, Cancer, and Death of parent
amy_in_the_city's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
As someone on the ace spectrum, I appreciated that this book had a main character, especially an older character, discovering that they were demisexual. However, the book got some things wrong about asexuality. At one point, Maggie explains that "Ace is also called 'graysexual.'" A quick Google search would have confirmed that those two terms don't mean the same thing and that "graysexual" is actually just one of many different types of asexuality. It's clear from other terms used in explaining asexuality that the author did research various terminology. It just seems like she got confused at some point with a couple of terms, but I wish there had been a sensitivity reader or an editor that could have caught this before it made it into the final book. I also thought Aiden seemed pretty clearly demiromantic as well, but this was never brought up and his demiromantic traits were lumped in with his demisexual traits. Terminology issues aside, I thought the demisexuality was represented well, and Aiden felt authentically demi in how he experienced the world and in how he reacted to learning there was a word for how he was.
Overall, this was a cute romance, and I had a great time reading it!
Graphic: Homophobia, Biphobia, Outing, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Misogyny, Sexism, Bullying, Cursing, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Sexual content, and Xenophobia
Minor: Infidelity, Acephobia/Arophobia, Addiction, Alcohol, Car accident, Drug abuse, and Grief
mspilesofpaper's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
TW: toxic family members, homophobia, latent racism
I didn't realise it when I got the book via Kindle Unlimited but I did read another book by Cathy Yardley; Love, Comment, Subscribe, which I disliked so much because it was very swallow and was based on stereotypes and had a clunky writing style. (Also, there's the issue of it being marketed as "enemies to lovers". I hate marketing that is just based on tropes and not on the plot.) It's good that I didn't realise it because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten Role Playing. While it won't win any literary awards, it's a cute and cosy romance with older main characters and bi- and demisexual representation.
Character-wise, it's the reversed "sunshine and grumpy" trope because Maggie is the grumpy, bitter one (though it's more hard shell, soft flesh) while Aiden is the cinnamon roll who's extremely positive in his outlook (and tends to let people steamroll over him). Neither of them is fit or ripped. They are very normal and I prefer such characters. My critique, character-wise, is that they sometimes felt a lot younger than they are in terms of behaviour because they tend to be rather indecisive and not as mature as you would a Gen X to be. If the age and grey hair hadn't been mentioned, these two could be easily in their 20s.
Story-wise, it could have been better in terms of pace. There's a lot of repetition of how introverted they are/how anti-social/lonely/... (not just monologue-like but also comments from other characters), which gets boring. While it's a large part of the plot that Maggie is certainly too anti-social and that Aiden requires a date for an event, I don't need to read constant comments about it. Plot-wise, it's pretty much a slow-burn small-town romance novel that is built on the "friends to lovers" and "reversed sunshine and grumpy" trope. There's not a lot going on but I liked the focus' on their relationship's development instead of having a case of insta-lust/insta-love.
Spice-wise: it's 2.5 🌶️ from me. There are two somewhat explicit scenes towards the end but they aren't extremely graphic. Compared to other sex scenes, I didn't mind reading them because they felt natural and realistic (including laughing etc) and not like a porno.
As for the bi- and demisexual representation: we need more asexual/demisexual (and aromantic) representation in books, movies and series. Personally, I'm asexual and I struggled for years with "Am I broken? What is wrong with me? Why don't I feel like this?" when everyone around me talked about their crushes and how they wouldn't mind having sex with a specific real-life crush/a celebrity crush/... - Granted, the internet allowed me to realise my own sexuality earlier than Aiden because I stumbled upon asexuality and aromanticism and had my moment of enlightenment, but I wish I had it earlier. It would have made things easier in my 20s. And it hurts me to read 1-star reviews that criticise the representation because "it's silly" and "progressive ideal". It isn't silly. It isn't some political movement. It's someone's sexuality and representation matters.
Read if you like:
✔️ Slow Burn Romance
✔️ Small Town Romance
✔️ Older Characters
✔️ Reverse Sunshine & Grumpy trope
✔️ Friends to Lovers
Graphic: Homophobia, Toxic relationship, and Biphobia
Minor: Death of parent and Racism
ravenk28's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Biphobia, Outing, and Homophobia
Moderate: Acephobia/Arophobia, Toxic relationship, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Racism, Cancer, and Death of parent
hopeamarsu's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Homophobia, Biphobia, and Outing
Minor: Racism and Death of parent