For years, Sadie Brooks has declined her best friend’s standing invitation to join his Dungeons & Dragons campaign. But when she unexpectedly loses her marketing job and flees New York City to spend the summer with him in small-town Texas, she also runs out of excuses to say no.
In the game, she becomes Jaylie, a powerful and self-assured human cleric blessed by the Goddess of Luck with spells to heal her companions. But in real life, Sadie believes her luck has run out, and she hopes the distraction will give her time to clear her head and plan next steps.
She never expected Noah Walker—the handsome, outgoing bartender roped into joining them—to factor into that plan. Like Sadie, he’s new in town. But with a taste for adventure, Noah never stays in one place for long. He’s something of a traveling bard—just like his character Loren, the charismatic, lute-strumming elf. While Jaylie finds herself succumbing to the bard’s charms over the course of their party’s travels, Sadie also begins to fall under Noah’s spell.
As their relationship progresses in both worlds, Sadie can’t help but wonder if they might last beyond the game. But when a surprising new opportunity opens in New York, she must face the truth about why she lost her job in the first place—and whether she and Noah have found something in Texas worth staying for. Torn between her career dreams in the city and the exciting uncertainty of a new adventure, she will have no choice but to roll the dice. (Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads.)
I recently joined a D&D campaign myself, so Roll for Romance intrigued me. I wanted to see what kind of experience Sadie would have, as well as get more insight into the inner workings of a different campaign and how Sadie would describe the experience. I loved the two different viewpoints that are Sadie's, as well as her D&D character Jaylie. Sadie is more reserved and cautious, having been recently kicked down by some life experiences. Jaylie is outspoken and brave, the parts to Sadie that Jaylie wishes she could be.
Meeting Noah is an unexpected surprise for Sadie. He seems the polar opposite of what she’d ever imagined for a D&D campaign. Her character and his in the game forge a strong bond, with those sentiments leaking into reality. But Noah is a self-professed wanderer who has no plans to settle in one place for very long, and Sadie feels like she has to get her life together and figure out the best course of action to being successful again, and she’s not sure that includes handsome newcomers or the small town she’s found refuge in.
In many ways, the D&D games help to boost Sadie’s confidence in herself. From one chapter to the next, there is real growth and maturation. For so long she’s focused more on someone else’s expectations and not on her own, and the campaign is a means to discovering more about her inner self and what truly will make her happy, conventional or not. Her best friend Liam was the perfect dungeon master. The game experience was described well and was well researched and thought out for the reading experience. The brewing romance between Sadie and Noah was exciting, but I also thought it was sweet how Sadie forges new friendships in and out of the campaign; it was a nice touch and added more dimension between the characters. Roll for Romance is a great read even if the person reading it doesn’t know much about D&D, and might even spark interest in pursuing and learning more about the game experience. It was a fun book!
Thanks to Random House for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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