Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce

RomanceContemporary

Feb 25

Written By taylor shepeard

Title: Dungeons and Drama

Author: Kristy Boyce

Publication Date: January 8, 2024

Audience: Young Adult

Genre: Romance

Sub-Genre: Contemporary

POV: Single

Series: Standalone

Format: Audiobook

—Narrator(s): Eva Kaminsky

3.75 ⭐

Pros:
✨Fun Concept
✨Authentic Romance
✨ Themes of Identity
✨Portrayal of Friendships

Cons:
✨ Needed another round of polishing

Synopsis

Musical lover Riley has big aspirations to become a director on Broadway. Crucial to this plan is to bring back her high school’s spring musical, but when …

… Riley takes her mom’s car without permission, she's grounded and stuck with the worst punishment: spending her after-school hours working at her dad’s game shop.
Riley can't waste her time working when she has a musical to save, so she convinces Nathan—a nerdy teen employee—to cover her shifts and, in exchange, she’ll flirt with him to make his gamer-girl crush jealous.
But Riley didn’t realize that meant joining Nathan's Dungeons & Dragons game…or that role playing would be so fun. Soon, Riley starts to think that flirting with Nathan doesn't require as much acting as she would've thought...

*Blurb taken from the StoryGraph

Review

This review may contain spoilers.

Riley’s whole life is musical theatre--so much so that she drives (without a license) out of town and without parental permission to a show, and winds up grounded. No musical theatre, no afterschool activities, and worst of all, no way out of an unwanted job at her dad’s game store where she’s forced to work with surly classmate, Nathan. In a run-in with her ex, Riley accidentally spins a tale that she’s dating Nathan, and so a mutual beneficial faking-dating ploy begins.

Alright, this was adorable. Nothing game changing or special, but super cute. I liked all of the theatre and comic-store happenings, as well as the thorough amount of details that led to an extraordinarily realistic setting. There is some miscommunication that happens here, but it gets resolved fairly fast and in a reasonable manner, all of which was in-line with the plot and (as someone who hates the miscommunication trope) highly appreciated.

The writing was lower level with some elevated vocabulary. This certainly could have used tightening and polishing, but it’s geared towards an audience of (I would say) high school Freshmen/Sophomores, so that’s not a big deal. Sometimes the style (not the content) did start to feel middle-grade as opposed to YA.

Overall, a cute, fast, fun read with a unique setting and some loveable characters!