“Crushing It” by Lorelei Parker is a cute and quirky rom-com in which our main female character, Sierra, is an advent gamer and game developer. She has an opportunity to travel to one of the biggest expo to present a game she is working on, but has a fear of public speaking.

To get over her terrifying fear, her best friend signs her up for a local bar “diary slaming competition”. She picks a journal entry from college regarding her embarrassing college crush, Tristan Spencer.

Finishing on a high, she is utterly mortified when the very same college crush steps up on stage as one of the other competitors.

I adored the other characters, especially Aida and Alfie.

Book Rating: 4

[** I received a copy of “Crushing It” by Lorelei Parker via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Thank you to publishers and Netgallery for the opportunity to review this book.]

#CrushingIt #NetGalley

I really wanted to enjoy this, the premise sounded fun, but sadly it didn't live up to its expectations.

The love-triangle trope is either a hit or miss for me and this was definitely a miss. One of the love interests was very obviously the bad choice, he was not so subtlety using Sierra and he had overall every red flag you could think of in one person, he was a very cartoon-like villain, it ruins the purpose of an angsty love-triangle, if there isn't really a choice to be made. The problem is Sierra was head-over-heels for him and kept making excuses for him, this made me dislike her a lot more, even though from start I found it very hard to relate to her. On the other hand the other side of the triangle, even though he was supposed to be "the good one", he was just a very flat and boring character, I honestly had no interest in him whatsoever.

The plot is very repetitive, one of the things that caught my eye about this book was the contest where participants had to tell embarrassing stories of themselves, it sounded like it could lead to funny moments. But it just made me cringe from start to finish. It also got quite repetitive by the second time that we had to see the contest again, and this contest scenario happened more than three times. I also find it quite unrealistic that Sierra, Tristan and Alfie all happened to be on the same bar for the same contest, that they all happened to know each other since college, and they all were in the same class in college where they were all forced to write diary entries and they all happened to still have this diaries and share the exact same moments from different pov's each night. I would've preferred to see their college moments in flashbacks because narrating via diary entries to a public crowd just was very unrealistic and it took me away from the story and it just gave me second-hand embarrassment and cringe for the characters.

And lastly, I think we needed to learn more about Sierra. Her motivation from going on the contest was that she wanted to lose a 10 year anxiety of public speaking so she can sell her video game at a conference but is hard to root for her when we don't have any deeper motivation. If we could learn more about why she loved videogames, why is this her passion? why videogames means so much to her? it would've been more meaningful and I would've felt the significance of her need to sell this videogame, otherwise is just this thing that is mentioned from time to time and that as a reader I don't really care much about.

What a charming read! Delightful beach reading. I really enjoyed this one.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Crushing It is a cute contemporary romance. Sierra has found herself a) with a habit of casually sleeping with men but not actually dating anyone, and b) with bad anxiety regarding public speaking. In these pages, she seeks to change both these.

Though Sierra's around 30 years old, this one struck me as pretty solidly "new adult." While her roommate's in a long-term romantic relationship, it seems Sierra and her two love interests don't have much dating/relationship history, so that might be why.

I considered DNFing this one a few times - I'm just not here for comments implying that having casual sex is a problem (as long as both partners are consenting adults and being safe with each other).

Later in the book, a man is waiting outside Sierra's home when he knows she'll be leaving. She's not pleased, but she also lets him walk them to their destination while I'm over here like... NOT OK! Tell him this is not OK!

Overall, I did enjoy reading about Sierra trying to develop a new skill set for work, as well as the relationship she ultimately settles into. (It's pretty insta-love, but I liked the person she ends up with enough to be excited for them.)

This was my first book by Lorelei Parker and I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed this rom-com as Sierra is not the typical main character on many rom-com novels. She is a gamer and a little awkward which was refreshing difference to other rom-coms. Even though I enjoyed this book I didn’t love the characters or plot. This is solely my personal opinion and is reflective of the author’s writing.

Thank you NetGalley and Lorelei Parker for the advanced copy of “Crushing It” in return for my honest review.

The cover attracted me. I swear, I'm such a sucker for chicklit books with attractive covers. Plus, it featured a gamer!

Anyway...

So this book didn't manage to excite me at any point of time because it was just...meh.

Sierra is a game developer who is trying to find love in this big, bad world. She is naive to the point of being irritating and doesn't learn from her mistakes. She also has this huge fear of speaking on a public platform in front of an audience because of something awful that happened with her while in school. She cannot talk before an audience without something shameful happening, like a fart setting itself loose or her stomach rumbling loudly.

Her best friend, Aida, decides to make her speak before their school alum in a bar (haha) which is run by another alum. All this, because Sierra has to talk before bloggers and gamers at a Gamescon in Germany. With this end in mind, Aida enrolls her in the competition. The participants have to talk about embarassed things about themselves and the one who raises the maximum laughs wins.

Here she meets the alum-cum-bar-owner, Alfred AKA Alfie. For most part, Sierra thinks of him as a dog - wants to miss his hair, rib his neck, probably massage his tummy as well.

She also meets Tristan, on whom she has had a major crush ever since school days. He is now a major asshole who mispronounces Sierra's name even after getting her card, but Sierra cannot seem to see his asshole-ery because she is concentrating only on his Greek God good looks. Also, Tristan is the reason Sierra lost confidence in public speaking in the first place, but it's okay apparently because he looks good.

Alfie is the typical good guy. Hardworking, truthful, loyal - basically everything Tristan is not. The author makes sure to drill this fact into our heads.

I couldn't get Sierra's attitude at all. One day, she's crushing on Tristan and going on a date with him, the next day, she's flirting with Alfie and fantasizing about having sex with him. And when Tristan asks her, she's miffed at him?! Wth?
Another grouse I had with her is that she acts like such a feminist sometimes but doesn't hold back from pulling others down when it suits her. Comparing Tristan's Vespa to Alfie's Mustang unfavourably shows just how shallow she is.

The plot is really promising - a person trying to regain their confidence on public speaking by overcoming their demons. But the execution is botched. I couldn't simply get over Sierra's pigheadedness and naivety. There's only so much you can take. The other characters are not well-etched either. Aida had so much potential, but she ends up as just a nagging friend. Alfie is too good, Tristan is too bad. Reynold is too cynical, Marco is too henpecked. Nobody has any redeeming features and I couldn't relate to any character.

The writing was good, though. This is my first book of Lorelei Parker and I'll look forward to reading more of her books, because her writing is beautiful. I'm sorry this book didn't work out for me, after all.

One last thing, Sierra is described as a woman who wears trendy clothes related to the games she loves and has multi-coloured hair. I'll say it again, the book cover let me down.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books for the ARC copy for a honest review.

In life, as in gaming, there’s a way around every obstacle . . .⠀ ⠀
To pitch her new role-playing game at a European conference, developer Sierra Reid needs to overcome her terror of public speaking. What better practice than competing in a local bar’s diary slam, regaling an audience with old journal entries about her completely humiliating college crush on gorgeous Tristan Spencer?⠀ ⠀
Until the moderator says, “Next up, Tristan Spencer . . .”⠀ ⠀
Sierra is mortified, but Tristan is flattered. Caught up in memories of her decade-old obsession as they reconnect, Sierra tries to dismiss her growing qualms about him. But it’s not so easy to ignore her deepening friendship with Alfie, the cute, supportive bar owner. She and Alfie were college classmates too, and little by little, Sierra is starting to wonder if she’s been focusing her moves on the wrong target all along, misreading every player’s motivations.⠀ ⠀
Maybe the only winning strategy is to start playing by her heart . . .”⠀
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*Thanks to Netgalley for an arc copy

Geek girl Sierra has to get more confident so she signs up for a journal reading contest. Of course humiliation from school never ends, so she recites an entry about Tristan Spencer, the hot hunk in her class. But there's some other stuff that happened that makes her question his judgement. OOH what's gonna happen.

All in all, these twists threw me for a loop. I also find it hard to believe that she only likes SAO for the video game stuff because um...SAO SUCKS. Just saying, I have seen better animes.

But, I did enjoy the characters and the things that happened.

Title: Crushing It
Author: Lorelei Parker
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2570-7

Crushing It follows Sierra, who is a video game developer and wants an opportunity to pitch her next game at the Gamescon. Standing between this opportunity and Sierra is her crippling stage fear. To overcome it, she takes up the Chagrin challenge, where participants have to share their most embarrassing anecdotes, diary entries, poetry, etc. Sierra decides to narrate about her humiliating crush on Tristan Spencer.

All seems fine, until the moderator says, "Next up, Tristan Spencer..."
Sierra is mortified, while Tristan is flattered. As they reconnect, Sierra grapples with her decade-long obsession with Tristan. But, she can't seem to ignore the pull towards Alfie, the supportive bar-owner, who befriends her and helps her pull through the contest. It appears that perhaps she has been noticing the wrong person, all along.

The book cover design and color combinations are gorgeous and catchy! I requested for the ARC on Netgalley, purely due to the amazing book cover design. The book also has some great moments in it. I would call it the "Eureka" moments. The moments I could relate to. There is a quote that I liked, "Suddenly the phrase tragedy plus time equals comedy made perfect sense." It is so true. How many times have we been worried, anxious, hysterical about certain situations? And as time passes, these same situations have become funny.

Sierra constantly keeps mentioning about the 3 kinds of love (According to the Greeks): Eros- love of the body; Philia or Phileo- love of the mind; and Agape- love of the soul. She then finds out about the other 4: Self-love, Flirtation, devotion, and effortless love. As the book follows Sierra and her relationship with Tristan and Alfie, we observe her experiencing all of these phases.

Sierra and Aida's friendship is heart-warming, and reading about their struggles to fit into the all-man world of video games is awe-inspiring. They hold their ground in several instances, and bond together to become strong allies. Parker's writing style is engrossing, breezy, and well-paced. I had fun reading the book, and it contained twists I couldn't have predicted.

I would give it 4/5 stars. It is a great summer and weekend read. It serves as the perfect book to chill with a glass of red wine.

I received this copy from Netgalley and Kensington Books in exchange for my honest review.

As a gamer, I wanted to like it. But it bored me from the beginning and I finally gave up. Sierra was too freaking gullible and Tristan was an Ass. The author's writing was fine, I just couldn't get behind the characters.

Crushing It
by Lorelei Parker

Talk about crushing it! Well this book certainly did - the writing was fresh, fun and the characters were quite enjoyable to read about. This book stood out from other romcoms for me for the story line that had amazing characters that are totally relatable and addressed important issues in a wonderful way. I would recommend this book for a wonderful summer read. This is thoroughly enjoyable and should not be missed. I recommend this book.

This is a new and refreshing take on a rom-com. I love that Sierra is not your typical lead in a rom-com novel. She's a little awkward, nerdy, and a gamer. It is refreshing that she offers something a little different and she's not the usual strong and confident lead. This story has a lot of elements of humor with some drama thrown in. I really enjoyed this read.

Crushing It turned out to be rather different from what i expected. Sierra is the most relatable character ! She is quirky, funny, and has a great fear for public speaking due to a horrific experience back in college. With great encouragement from best-friend Aida and good ol' swoon-worthy Alfie, she enters a public speaking competition down at the local pub to help overcome her fear and hopefully prove to her boss that she is the best candidate to be sent to Germany for 'Gamescon'. There is A LOT of drama in this one and there are characters that I truly wanted to smack upside the head and yell GROW UP! But i guess that's what Lorelei does so well, right? The characters are purposefully embarrassing and annoying and they have some epic cringe-worthy moments - but it was SO refreshing! Truly a lovely, heart-warming, and realistic rom-com!

Wasn't sure what to think about this book because it is about gaming but it was cute. It was really fun to have a women in a STEM career- we need a lot more of that! I loved the different friendships that were portrayed in the book. Thank you also for the steam... i always enjoy that!

This book was such a welcomed change of pace from my normal thrillers. I thoroughly enjoyed this cute little story, and I can't wait to read more by Parker!

This was a very fun book that I read in one sitting. The first thing that caught my attention is the beautiful cover of the remarkably elegant girl. I am so glad that this book accomplished what I wanted, fun and enjoyable read. It is the story of Sierra Reid, who works as a video game developer. In order to play her new role-playing game at a European conference, Sierra needs to overcome the terror of public speaking. So she chooses to compete in a local bar's diary slam. Her main objective is to entertain her audience with old journal entries about the crush she had during her time in college. Everything was going well but then, she realizes that her former crush is the moderator! Oh surprise, now what will she do? Not an easy situation, for sure, Sierra really desires to be able to attend that conference in Europe but she will have to decide if she will deal with her old crush in this new challenge that she wants to overcome. Overall, this is a book I enjoyed for its simplicity in the description of the situations Sierra experiences, it is difficult to define how she felt, to see after so many years the man she dreamed of, not so long ago. I think the author described it thoroughly well. I thank NetGalley and Kensington Books for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Such a great book! Sierra Reid is the main character, she is a video game developer and I was a bit concerned about that aspect of the book since I know nothing of coding or video games, but I was easily able to keep up. She has the worst fear of public speaking and has to overcome that to excel in her job, and to do so enters a contest in a bar, where she reads and old diary about her college crush and then runs right into him! Alfie is the bar owner and also went to college with Tristan and Sierra, he is all kinds of supportive and just really nice. There is a lot of miscommunication between these 3 and also self discovery, it's funny and sweet and definitely a worthwhile read!

This was a cute quick adult contemporary romance, filled with fun things like video game references as well confronting fears. I will admit that there were so many awkward, uncomfortable encounters/talks in the story that made me want to cringe for the characters- but that was basically the point of the story. The main character enters a competition to embarrass herself in public, where the most outrageous stories are voted as the winners. I liked that this was the tool for the main character to overcome her fear of public speaking, I mean really, how can a practiced work presentation ever compare to spilling embarrassing secrets in front of an audience?

I found it kind of interesting that the main character was not your typical female romance character. She was bold (except for her one hang up on public speaking), she was smart and driven, she loved video games (they were basically her whole life and she referenced all kinds of video game terms for regular life events which I loved) and she sought out sex without fear of repercussions (she knew she liked it and had no qualms with her self esteem or desires). I enjoyed watching her interact with a certain cute boy who stole her (and my heart) from their first interaction, and the fact that she had something new for her to experience and grow from. This was very much a story about facing fears and personal growth- as well as keeping an eye out for love.

This is the perfect read for anyone who needs a HEA in their life, likes video games and doesn't mind experiencing second hand embarrassment for the characters they root for!

Crushing It by Lorelei Parker is a fun romance, and my first book by this author. Sierra Reid is a role-playing game developer, who has a fear of public speaking. Sierra needs to over come that fear so she can attend a conference, and promote her new game. To get over her fear she participates in the local bar's diary slam, and talks about her college crush Tristan Spencer. After she finishes, she hears the speaker announce Tristan Spencer is up next. If you enjoy fun romantic comedy's than this book if for you. Perfect escape from everything going on in your life. I recommend this book.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Ahh! This book was so adorable! I love how you start falling for one love interest just to switch to another. It started out as an enemies to lovers and then totally takes a 180 and she realizes that her enemy wasn't her enemy 10 years ago but definitely is now.

I liked getting to see the world of gaming behind the scenes and thought that her idea of overcoming her fear of public speaking included reading diary entries in front of strangers. The competition between her and Tristen showed what "playing dirty" means.

I loved Sierra's friends. They were such a fun bunch and really encouraged her to take part in the competition. Without their support she wouldn't have participated, even when it caused her great embarrassment, and she wouldn't have found love.

I'd definitely recommend this one to anyone looking for a great adult romance!