I had a really hard time getting into this book, the characters themselves didn’t seem distinct or dynamic enough and the bits I did read made them seem like gay kids written by a straight person rather than their distinct person. And while I wasn’t expecting the book to include scenes like it the early exchange of their character sheets threw me off. Unfortunately this one hit the mark for me but perhaps others would find entertainment in it

I really wanted to love this book. A fun geeky lgbtq+ book sounds so fun, but this just doesn't hit the mark. The characters felt flat and immature. I appreciate what the author was trying to do and the inclusive atmosphere he was trying to create, but it could have been done better. However, it is still a fun, quick read and I would recommend to people who like DnD and geeky, queer, fun groups.

Unfortunately this one was not for me.
I was intrigued by the premise, as someone who has never played D&D but has seen a few play-throughs and found those fun, and as someone who is queer.
I really enjoyed the descriptive writing style and also the way the story inside of a story was told. (4 stars for both.)
I thought about DNFing very early on, when a trans character is introduced and her deadname included... I continued only by hoping this is changed in the final version.
I found the tone clashed in the 1st half - sometimes I felt i was reading MG/YA and others New Adult. For example, Ben was both too old for his behaviour and too young for his "issues" (i don't find it that weird to have a 25yo figuring life out). This influenced how much i got into the story and cared about the characters; I liked the D&D plotline, but I only got invested in the "real-life" plot over halfway through, as the book got more solid in the latter half.
I wish the ending would've let us know what happened to some of the other characters too, not just the main couple.

Yes, yes, everything yes! Full disclosure I was immediately giddy when I saw the cover and title of this book. Lucky for me the story didn't let me down! Ben is going through a bit of a rough patch in life. At 25 he's still living at home in his parents' basement. His history degree hasn't exactly paved an easy path in his life and after being laid off from the library (his dream job), Ben has started selling nostalgic toys and other items online to make his money. On top of it all, the guy from the record shop has just told him he doesn't see him as anything more than a friend... but not really even that. The one thing that has kept Ben going is his weekly roleplaying game.

Much of this story takes place inside a fantasy world. Whether that's the actual fantasy game playing out on the page or the fantasies that Ben dreams up about this perfect life. I so badly wanted to reach out and give Ben a hug and a good pep talk. I really enjoyed the variety of characters we see in both the comic shop and around the gaming table. Specifically, I loved the growth of Mooneyham throughout the book, the kiss-in, and finally being able to be himself at work, even if it comes at the expense of losing those you thought were friends.

I wish there was more explanation of the vampires, I would love a second book that tells me just what the heck is going on with Varnec, Polly, and plays out just a bit more of the relationships between the guys. Overall this was just such an amazingly fun and engaging book. Once I started I didn't want to put it down.

5/5 Stars!

Thank you to NetGalley, University Of Iowa Press, and Doug Henderson for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I've never played D&D and know pretty much nothing about how it works but the book gave a good introduction to it and the chapters that took place in the game were written in an easy to understand format, immersing the reader in the game. The group of characters all had more drama outside of the game than in, however. A lot of it centred on their relationships and I wanted to shake some of them sometimes. It tackled issues such as homophobia and anxiety but ultimately I felt some of the characters could have been better developed and more well rounded. Overall, it was fun.

When I first came across this book the title stuck out to me. It was bluntly unique which I found charming, but as I read it, I fell out of interest for the story. This book follows Ben who’s apart of the, you guessed it, the Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club. Throughout the story you learn about each member of the club, their in-game characters and the relationships they build together as they journey on a quest. I liked the way the storytelling switched from the real world to diving into the game but I didn’t enjoy the point of view changes. Don’t get me wrong, I love point of view changes in a story, but there was just too many for my liking and it made it hard to keep track on what was going on. I really wanted to enjoy this story but overall I found it confusing and hard to read.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me this book as a few arc in exchange for an honest review! #TheClevelandHeightsLGBTQSciFiandFantasyRolePlayingClub #NetGalley

There was a ton of potential in this book, but there were some shortcomings that kept me out of the story. The characters are all interesting in premise, but don't feel fully realized. The premise is interesting, but the plot is so slow to start it failed to grasp me. More than anything, the dead-naming of the only transgender character and the use of a slur against Romani people really took me straight out of the story, though others have pointed these out and I'm hopeful they'll have been removed from the final version.

I have to say, though, that the actual in-game writing was well done, immersive and engaging as well as funny. I will definitely look for some more of Doug Henderson's work, because even though this story didn't grab me it had wonderful potential.

Phew, that's a title and a half! And really, the second part could have just been 'D&D group', although that might have put a few people off the book, I suppose. However, having 'discovered' D&D myself for the first time during lockdown, I am now a big fan, and that was probably the main draw for me!

The game in question is hosted by DM (dungeon master) Celeste every Thursday night in the back room of the comic book store where several of the characters work. Valerie, the youngest of the group; Mooneyham, a banking exec who has yet to come out to his macho boys-own colleagues; and Ben, still living in his parents' basement, jobless and loveless. And then Albert is invited to play, and Ben is sure he's too attractive for D&D - and too attractive for Ben.

The bulk of the story is about these youngsters (well, they are to me!) navigating the treacherous waters of love: unrequited, closeted, or of unknown casual/serious state. I'd usually run a mile from anything in the 'romance' genre, but this is all so well done - so down to earth and just real.

Against that we have the fantasy story being told through the D&D game. That, too, is really well done: we're immersed into the fantasy world, but still acknowledging that it is a game and the players are both the characters and their own selves. Makes for some really funny moments, too, and you don't have to know any technicalities about D&D to enjoy the 'qwest' ;)

Those laughs counteract the real-world woes - much like game playing does, I suppose. There's a lot of heartbreak, and a lot of human truths, about belonging and finding your place in life. Alas, it doesn't quite feel entirely satisfying: one character has a 'full' story, the rest feel a little forgotten. Several elements seem to have huge importance through the narrative - I mean, vampires? What?? - that are then never explained.

If you're willing to take those as "yup, life is messy and weird and unexplained", then there's 'enough' to like here. I can even forgive the several instances of highly flowery, very poetic descriptions, even though they largely struck me as a novice author trying that bit to hard.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the read - and it was an easy book to just gallop through - as it hit the right spots of sweet and nice and real.

Love the concept of The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club by Doug Henderson, but not the execution, or lack there of when it came to the character development. Being a geek who reads comics and plays Magic the Gathering, I really enjoyed reading about the group’s time spent playing D&D and their run in with the vampire LARP group, since I could actually see things like that happening. I think if Henderson were to write a D&D novel he would do a great job.

But the characters were all stereotypes of geeks and nerds… which is fine since some stereotypes really do fit geeks, but I wanted more character development. Valerie was there to make a couple of scenes weird and Celeste, well I really don’t know. Mooneyham and Huey were there to add in a homophobic layer, and Albert/Jeff were there as love interests to Ben, who I guess had the most development. If you think a 25 year old who goes to thrift stores to sell items on eBay and still lives in his parent’s basement is a well rounded character and not just a stereotype.

While I think this book was supposed to take place in present day, it felt more like the 1980’s when groups of kids would get picked on for playing D&D… especially since in present day, D&D and MTG are played by some pretty cool people like MMA fighters, football players and actors.

I think if you’re a geeky, young adult questioning your sexuality or already know that you’re LGBTQ, then you may enjoy this book, but even to you it may come off as a bit shallow.

I read this book as an ARC from Netgalley--thank you!

Every Thursday, a small group of queer friends meet in the backroom of a local comic bookstore to play D&D. But a way too cute new member, a creepy local vampire dude, and a homophobic encounter at a nearby bar will soon push the group to the edge of disaster.

Though it has a few problems, I found myself often charmed by this book. The writing is really solid and the characters are sympathetic. I liked the chapters of D&D gameplay and the cute little ways that the real world would invade the game--and vice versa. The heart of the book is Ben, and his journey is definitely the most compelling part.

This book is a peaceful weekend read. Though the story is not fully realized (often lost the plot), and the ending felt like it ran out of steam a little, the book's heart kept me quite engaged. This story of found family and nerd love will surely find a home with many readers, as it did with me.

CW: deadnaming

I was really interested in reading this book. I’m not into role playing games but many friends are. And I know many, many queer people who would love to be on queer only teams. So I had high expectations going in. However...it was just okay. I liked all the characters enough, but I never felt truly invested in any of them. I didn’t care if Mooneyham and Huey actually tied the not (they’re both pretty shallow), I didn’t care about Valerie and Polly (Polly was frankly really annoying) and the one character I really enjoyed, Celeste, went nowhere. The big triangle of Ben/Jeff/Albert was predictable, but predictability is good in a way. It made the read easier. Overall I wasn’t thinking about the characters much inbetween reads which is always an indicator to me that they just didn’t make an impact on me.

Side note, the use of G*psy and E*kimo felt very dated as well as the quick instance of dead naming Celeste. I thought those were big “oofs” that jive with the mindset of most readers now.

I don’t know if I would read anything else by this author. It was fine, but I wasn’t grabbed at all.

This book could have been a lot more. All of the characters had something to them that makes you go “yeah this is going to be good” but I felt as though the author did not take full advantage of them.

So we have Ben as the main character, which fine. Completely understand his plight as a mid twenty year old with no job prospects. But that was kind of his only personality trait. And I feel as though by Ben’s story taking the forefront, everyone else’s stories were undeveloped.

Mooneyham and Huey probably had the next most page time. But Mooneyham’s whole thing was “should I come out at work?” and Huey’s whole character existed to be subject to homophobia, and even a few remarks towards Asians.

Valerie’s subplot was so weird. She had a kind of girlfriend and also a run in with vampires that honestly I still don’t understand. Her having povs made no difference to the plot at all.

And Celeste. She had a couple of povs for really no reason. Like she didn’t really have a plot in this.

Also I guess Albert had a few povs at the end to make us feel bad for him? I’m not sure.

I just think this book had so many characters and not enough time to do anything with them. They were all pretty one dimensionally and bland. Also there was a continuous use of the g slur thats used towards romani people in one chapter which was quite uncomfortable to read.

The positives of this book would be that everyone was unapologetically LGBT and the relationships were cute. Also some scenes were funny. But really I think it needed to be fleshed out a bit more and scanned for harmful comments from various characters that were unnecessary.

I wanted to like this book much more than I did. About a queer D&D group, the scenes set during the gaming sessions were wonderful, both the in-character interactions and the gamers talking smack. I liked the range of different types of gamers.

The rest of the novel left me unsatisfied. The characters were slightly skewed stereotypes at the beginning, deepening as the novel progressed. I get that this is supposed to mirror how characters evolve in a game from initial stats to complex people. Maybe the plot got in the way? The expected ending felt scattershot and unearned and rushed.

I wanted more weirdness, even though it contains a vampire cult and tentacle dildos. Or maybe more subversion. For instance, the protagonist is an insecure nerd who lives in his parents’ basement. He’s even a virgin. But he’s gay! I expected more.

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc of this book.

though i am not familiar with role-playing games like D&D, i had high hopes for this book because who doesn’t love a good LGBTQ story? the wide number of characters and the lack of personalization made it hard for me to find interest in finishing the book. i so badly wanted to be invested in the character arches and the plot, but i just wasn’t.

2.5 stars

Initially, this seemed like an excellent book for me. I’m a queer nerd, and I love a book about a group of wildly different people joined together by a shared interest. In fact, I think that had I read this book as a high schooler, I would have really connected with it, particularly because the book focuses a great deal on feeling adrift and unsure of the future, and searching for a connection with another person when you feel ‘different’ from everyone else.

Reading it now, however, I didn’t find myself enjoying the story as I had expected to. Although all of the characters save one are in their early- to mid-twenties, most of them (save Mooneyham, who along with his boyfriend Huey was easily my favorite) felt much more like teenagers. None of the characters were particularly developed, and I was disappointed that the book leaned into stereotypes about the type of people who play tabletop games.

I was also perturbed by the amount of isolation the nerdy characters felt due to being nerdy; the story is clearly set in the present day, but apparently in this fictionalized Cleveland, D&D is still treated like leprosy. In actual fact, the game has enjoyed enormous popularity and growing mainstream visibility in recent years. Geeks are cool in 2021… except in Cleveland, apparently. And that wasn’t the only ‘out-of-time’ aspect of the story that jarred me; a number of mannerisms and setting ‘color’ seemed more at home in the mid-2000s than the modern day.

There was also a subplot about vampire LARPers that didn’t go anywhere and felt unfinished. These characters were such sketched-in stereotypes that they felt like they’d be more appropriate as background antagonists in a nerdy webcomic than actual characters in a novella.

I think this book would appeal primarily to a Young Adult audience, particularly young queer teens struggling with how to juggle all the different aspects of their identity along with the confusing expectations of rapidly-approaching adulthood. For many people, this could be a new favorite book. For me, however, the characters and writing were lacking.

Oof. This was not for me, I don’t know what else to say. In the beginning I was hesitant based on the writing but as I got into it I just couldn’t follow the story. There were a lot of features and aspects of the story that I couldn’t keep track of which made it a harder read. I think people who are invested in the plot and the type of fantasy of the story would really enjoy but it just wasn’t something for me.

3.5 stars

As someone who has been fascinated with DnD for a long time, picking up this book (even with its intimidating long title) felt like a no-brainer. From the title and the description, I thought it was going to be a heartwarming tale about a group of DnD players who find a found family in their little group as they deal with the outside world.

Alas. You know what they say about assumptions.

Let me start out with saying that I did enjoy the book. It moved quickly and it was delightful to see how the real world and those of the DnD world bled together as the story went along. However, there were definitely a few things that had me raising my eyebrows

1. The group didn't really seem to be that invested in each other or even the game at certain points.
2. The amount of sexual innuendo was incredibly overdone - I love a sex joke as much as the next person, but people do talk about other things.
3. There were a bunch of subplots that were either never wrapped up and severely underdeveloped.

Honestly, I feel like this book would have actually been more successful as a series of short stories with the DnD meetings serving as the bridge between each individual player's story. I think it would have really made what is a really great concept come to life more.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

I really tried to get into this book. It had a cute start with the characters gathering to play D&D together. However there were a lot of characters to keep track of, and if you are not well versed in D&D it can be very confusing. I was hoping this knowledge would not be necessary, but for me, I felt so lost. I think if I understood it more, I would have been more engaged with this.

I wish I liked this more. While not as insufferably cringey as some other attempts to depict the actual play of RPGs, both the table chatter and dramatization of what happens in-game is pretty dire. Not that what occurs around the gaming table in real life is high art, but it's an incredibly difficult interaction to mimic.

Creating a fictional D&D campaign, you're not only writing a story within a story. You're writing about a group of people creating a story together. Probably with jokes. You might as well try to write a book about an improv troupe and describe each of their scenes. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but this is God Tier, 30th level stuff.

That's not the only aspect of the story where the author's earnest inexperience shows. Certain incidents (the main character stealing the show at a concert, someone punching a weirdo customer in the face, the kid who wears cosplay ALL THE TIME) strain credulity. Essentially, it's difficult to read this without thinking, "Sure, *that* happened."

Which is a shame, because I'm glad this book exists. I like that the romances between the various characters aren't perfect. I like that main character's love interest is kind of a tool. And I like that it's got LGBTQ nerds in their twenties just being LGBTQ and nerdy. It's the sort of book I'd send back to myself and all the other gamers I knew in high school.

But the actual play RPG sessions and High Fidelity ennui make this impossible to recommend to another adult. It's one thing to have characters behave in unrealistic ways and encounter unlikely situations. But to have a fake D&D group playing a fake D&D game and making jokes and insisting on how much fun they're having?

Oof. I roll to disbelieve.

**Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review**
“The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role-playing Club” by Doug Henderson is a multi-point-of-view novel about a queer Dungeons and Dragons club following the experiences of multiple members with relationships and homophobia.
I really expected to enjoy this books, but sadly the cons far outweigh the cons in this one. First of all, while being LGBT, it wasn't very diverse. Most of the characters were white and gay and the only trans character was deadnamed when she was introduced.
The characters weren't very interesting or deep either, the main character, Ben, was 25 and acted like a teenager (for example he actually got depressed and wouldn't leave his bed because his crush won his lucky die from him? I mean, not even the actual teenagers I know would overreact like that) which is part of the reason why I think this would've worked better if the characters were all aged down and placed in a high school setting.
There isn't much plot, we're just following the lives of the characters, which aren't that interesting to begin with. I really liked the last chapter though, I thought it tied everything up nicely and left you with room to imagine what could come next.
Overall, I'm sadly giving this 2/5 stars.