morainjay 's review for:

Roll For Romance by Lenora Woods

2.5

adventurous lighthearted slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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If you want a simple, uncomplicated, no-third-act-breakup romance, then this is for you. The main characters are fun and cute and uncomplicated. The book is fine.

If you're the type of person who finds the details important, you're going to have a tough time with this one. As a details person, I had a tough time getting through this book.

• Every time we were in the D&D world, I was wondering if a character's action was something their player would be deciding and/or explaining to the table, and thus I couldn't get that into those parts of the book.
• Our MMC is a traveler, a nomad, and somehow that is translated directly to a "runner". Sadie worries so often about Noah "running away" from her, but we were never given any evidence he would run away from the relationship. I didn't see how being a person who hasn't settled down in one place would mean this person was afraid of any and all types of commitment. This drove me insane.
• The timeline of events doesn't make sense. I could not keep track of how much time was passing, and with Sadie's job interviews I just kept thinking, "Is this really how fast this would take?"
• We did not need chapter 18. Dare I say, including chapter 18 ruined the book. It stole an emotional gut punch and turned the punch into an emotional gut tap.
  In chapter 18, we see Noah's D&D character emotionally struggle over Sadie's character's death and make the decision to bargain with a devil to save Sadie's character's life. Because we got this chapter, it was not at all surprising when a devil showed up to make Noah's character pay the price for his deal. No surprise, no emotional gut punch. We got scenes in the real world of Noah avoiding telling Sadie what happened and that is all we needed to know something was up. We did not need anything else!
• After all those pages and words in the D&D world...
  we don't flippin' see the big bad defeated!! Sadie's character is knocked unconscious and when she wakes up everyone is like, "Oh yeah, we won, it's fine." If we could get chapter 18, we could get the action of the big bad actually being taken down, no matter if Sadie's character was conscious or not.
  Unbelievable.