Roll for Romance by Lenora Woods
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Roll for Romance follows Sadie, an artist who has been working in marketing in New York City. After suddenly losing her job, she’s in need of a shake up and decides to accept her best friend’s offer to go stay with him for the Summer in his small Texas town.
I don’t remember her BFF’s name, so let’s call him Frank. Frank is super into D&D and also finally convinces Sadie to join his group. He couldn’t be happier.
It’s there she meets Noah, a hot bartender, who also happens to be new to the area. There’s an attraction, and the two end up spending time together outside of game nights.
In fact, Noah is even able to secure some work for Sadie at his bar, so they’re forced to spend even more time together. They needed a mural painted and Sadie seemed like the perfect fit for the job. That was pretty much the only element I enjoyed.
Honestly, I should have DNFed this one at the halfway point. I was bored out of my skull. I didn’t feel anything for Sadie. I just didn’t care about her at all. She felt extremely flat and unemotional to me. IDK, maybe I’m just a bitch, but even though I liked Noah initially, even he came to bore me.
There was just nothing exciting or engaging about this romance, IMO. It felt like their connection was solely the fact that they were both new to the area. I just felt no spark at all between them.
Additionally, with the D&D game, we DID NOT need to go into the campaign in the depth that we did. It was awful. Every character in the group, of course, has their own character in the game, an there’s entire sections of their characters in the campaign and it completely kicked me out of the romance every time we got to one of the sections.
I’ve enjoyed gaming in stories before and have even loved books with D&D groups involved, but usually it’s more the banter amongst the group and the interactions they have on game night versus the actual campaigns!
Overall, I was just extremely bored by this. I wanted a cute, fun, kicking my feet romance between two characters who happen to also play D&D. Instead, I got two bores plus entire sections of fantasy campaigning. No, thank you.
But with this being said, just because this didn’t work for me, doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. There are some glowing reviews of this story, so people are definitely enjoying it. Don’t let me rain on your parade. If you think it sounds good, I encourage you to pick it up and give it a go!
Thank you to the publisher, Dell, for providing me with a copy to read and review. Though I didn’t walk away having found a new fave, I’m still glad I gave it a shot. You never know until you try.