Role Playing

                     

Title: Role Playing

Author: Cathy Yardley

Published: Montlake, July 1, 2023

Pages: 331

Genre: LGBTQ Contemporary Romance

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?

Maggie Le is goals. She is an editor who works from home and tries to stay at home as much as possible. But her son is off for college, and she wants him to make the most of it. So they make a deal that he will go out and socialize if she will as well. In her efforts to get out and socialize, she finds herself in a new online gaming guild. Her name is Bogwitch, and everyone in the guild assumes she's in her 80s. She assumes everyone in the guild is in their late teens and early 20s. Hilarity ensues.

Some of the socializing that Maggie does is to appease Deb. Her son's best friend's mother. Deb is recently divorced, and also a new empty-nester. You would think that they would get on great. Maggie keeps going to events planned by Deb. Book club, a football party, etc. She realizes pretty quickly that they're not her cup of tea, but she's made this deal. 

When one of her guild-mates breaks his foot, she offers to bring him some soup. Maybe she's missing having a motherly responsibility, or maybe she just enjoys Otter's company, and needs out of the house. She brings some homemade pho to the home of someone she assumes is going to be a struggling 20-something. She finds a very attractive 50-something man named Aiden. They're already essentially best friends, and now they both know that they find one another attractive. 

I could not put this book down. Or stop listening, technically. Regardless, I loved everything about this. And I really do believe that Maggie Le is everything I'd like to be when I grow up. You know, in like 10 years. Minus the video games, I'll always be crap at gaming. But I can do other nerd stuff! 

Ratings

Stars: 5/5

Spice: 5/5