Oh Melody. What a mess! Melody Joo is a new producer at a rising an up-and-coming gaming company in Seattle. She made career shift, trying to break into gaming after gaining some experience in advertising. She is determined to cut through the judgments she’s saddled with as an Asian American woman and be taken seriously by the bros of the company, even after the CEO takes her joke concept for a new game which he overhears and pitches himself to the board. She’s already overworked and sleep deprived and lagging behind the personal milestones of her best friends who are getting pregnant and getting married and living comfortably financially and now she has to bring her concept into the world on a tight budget and deadline relying predominantly on the help of a coworker/office mate who despises her and the new intern/nephew of the CEO, who, she assumes, is only there due to nepotism. Along the way she tries to keep up with maid-of-honor duties of her frenemy/neighbor Jane as well as her overbearing parents who want Melody to be married off and making grandbabies yesterday. She’s also stunned when her game idea is leaked online and she becomes the target of trolls hurling dick picks and death threats for having conceived of a game geared toward women. Oh and she has to thwart that growing crush on the good-looking intern who is far better at his job than she thought.

While this was such an easy read, and I laughed a few times as I sped through, around the halfway point I was mostly cringing at the problematic parts. So many of the situations were over the top, which is fine, but it also seemed like while the main character was railing against stereotypes of women in gaming and misogyny & racism in general, she also ended up foisting a few too many stereotypes upon her best friends, and women hating on women is never a good look. She wants to be taken seriously but doesn’t take her friends seriously, in fact none of the characters, Melody included, were quite fleshed out in meaningful ways which left them as unbelievable sketches spouting stilted dialogue at each other. Side note: How many times can one book mention strippers before it loses all meaning? Also, Melody admits to having IBS but doesn’t make even the barest of efforts toward eating anything that would offset symptoms, and she pokes fun at the gross health food Jane loves. There was too much going on and a few too many convenient plot lines (her bestie knows hacktivists who can help where the police won’t in tracking down the dangerous stalkers??) which in my eyes got twisted up and further confused who Melody was supposed to be.