3.75 ⭐ I was really hesitant when I first started this because I am mostly definitely not the target audience and I'm not much of a Young Adult reader, but as a D&D/board game nerd I had to give it a chance. The first couple of chapters, I really wasn't finding myself enjoying the story, but once we got into the meat of the story between Riley and Nathan, I started to warm up to it. The relationship between them is very much the epitome of young love (in a good way) and I enjoyed the fake dating trope more than I was expecting. Also, watching Riley and Joel's relationship strengthen throughout the story really warmed my heart - you could tell throughout how proud Joel is of his daughter and how badly he wants a good relationship with her. What bugged me the most about the book, however, was Riley's mom -

it felt exactly like what Joel said, they built a wall around themselves (Riley and her mom) and didn't let Joel in, which made having a relationship with his daughter difficult. On top of that, her mom essentially talks crap about Joel to Riley, which made Riley feel like she had to take sides and negatively impacted the father/daughter dynamic. As a parent, this is a huge red flag and really brought the story down for me when she was involved.

Cute, quick read that hopefully brings more tweens and teens into the world of TTRPG and board games.