Quick Synopsis – Darcy moves to a small town with her moms and feels like a fish out of water. When they lived in the city no one cared about her two moms, she had a boyfriend, and a D&D group. Now she has to start all over and facedown small town prejudices. When she gets pared with Art on an English project, she starts to see maybe small towns aren’t so bad.

This is a debut YA novel with light romance, a D&D campaign that mirrors the real life story, and deals with themes of homophobia and intimate partner abuse.

Song This Reminds Me Of – Reckless Driving by Lizzy McAlpine

Publication Date – Feb. 06, 2024

Steamy Rating – 🌶

Overall Rating – 3.5 out of 5 ⭐

Review – Content warning, this book contains blatant homophobia, domestic violence, emotional abuse, and light swearing.

I liked this book; it was a cute book that dealt with some very serious themes. Honestly, this is the kind of book I would have loved in high school. Somehow, I’ve never played D&D, and this book kind of made me want to try (if my husband reads this, he’s going to kill me 😂).

Darcy is a fierce character who starts out hating that she’s moved to a small town but grows and builds her own community. At first, she and her parents experience terrible prejudice, including a brick thrown through their window. While there is no physical violence, there is a lot of fear and hate in the community. This isn’t resolved by the end of the novel, but there are steps taken to make the town and high school safer places for queer people.

The violence in the book comes from Darcy’s boyfriend/ex James. At first, he’s described as a teen dream bad boy, but as the story progresses, he turns out to just be a bad guy. Honestly, this part was a gut punch to read because I was in a relationship like this. James does a lot of “you can never leave me” type things, including grabbing and pushing Darcy around. I hope other readers who read those sections realize there is help out there.

Darcy and Art were such little cuties. I loved that he just wanted to make her feel happy. He so quickly invited her to his D&D session because he knew it would bring her joy. He also planned a LARP (live-action role play) date, and it was just so sweet. Of course, there are multiple obstacles for them to overcome, and I think the author does a good job of explaining how growing up with homophobic ideals can really create cognitive biases that affect your worldview. Art doesn’t think he’s homophobic, but he also doesn’t understand (at first) why when Darcy is bullied, she doesn’t report it.

One of my main issues with the book was the timeline. There were multiple times where the time didn’t make any sense. Darcy starts school on a Friday, and Art offers her a ride home, but forgets. The story then continues to say that Art apologizes the next day at school… which would be a Saturday. I loved the D&D campaign inserts but in some places, it interrupted the story abruptly and it was too harsh of a cutaway. There could have been more world and character building in these spaces to make it less harsh.

Overall, I thought this was a good story that expands on how harsh it can be for a queer person to be in a community with no support. It also has some smoldering kisses which doesn’t hurt.

Thanks to NetGalley and House of Anansi Press for the ARC.