DATING & DRAGONS by Kristy Boyce
The burden of unrealistic expectations weighed heavily on my reading experience for this one. Dungeons & Drama was one of my favorite books last year and part of that was the sheer surprise at finding a young adult romance so enjoyable. I read it purely on a whim and was instantly glad I did.
The other part of why I enjoyed Dungeons & Drama so much is that it read like an alternate universe where my wife and I met in high school instead of college. I was a super dork driving around listening to Weird Al and she was a show choir kid. That connection made it pretty special.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have that same connection with Dating & Dragons. The dude seemed a little too cool and confident, which is probably an accurate reflection of the world today in which roleplaying is more popular than ever but it wasn’t my experience. The girl on the other hand is more timid and lacking in self-confidence. It’s a reversal of Dungeons & Drama and a reversal of my real life experience. So not something I can knock the book for, I’m sure this experience reads true to many other people it just meant I didn’t have that strong connection from the other book.
Overall, I still had a fun time with the book. It’s sweet and charming in all the ways I wanted. I enjoyed the side characters. Multiple scenes made me laugh. It was a breezy read perfect to slot in between the chonky epic fantasy and science fiction novels I’m tackling.
My biggest critique is that I think the romance might actually be the weakest part of the book, which is not necessarily what you want from a…romance book. However, I’m not sure if that’s because the romance is weak or just that the other elements are stronger. I’m still pretty new to the romance world, both in adult and young adult so I don’t have a lot of things to compare it to. If anything, I think I’m just learning what tropes I like. The fake dating from Dungeons & Drama worked for me because it felt very rom-com. The “we obviously like each other but aren’t allowed to date because reasons” didn’t work for me because it felt a little melodramatic and kinda silly. If you like each other, date! Who cares what your D&D group says. But maybe that’s a function of me being an adult with the hindsight that nothing in high school was as important as it seemed at the time.
One of the other storylines is about Quinn finding (and learning to trust) a friend group at her new school when the disastrous implosion of her friend group at her previous school looms over her. That whole thing worked for me and felt believable. And then have Quinn’s grandma coming to terms with her age and needing to downsize and move to a retirement home. That one also worked for me and the grandma is lowkey the star of the book. We also get some brother/sister dynamics and with Quinn and her younger brother, which mostly worked for me.
Those additional storylines flesh out the world and kind of steal the show. I think the strength of all the side characters and side stories make this worth reading. You just have to do a little mental gymnastics to recategorize the book as a teen drama rather than a teen romance and you’ll have a good time.
