DNF'd @ 25%

I really wanted to like The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club by Doug Henderson, but it just wasn't working for me. The characters were one note, borning, and some of them were actively annoying. They're supposed to be mid-20s, but I would have guessed they were all still in high school if I wasn't told otherwise. Plus, even after 25% nothing at all seemed to happen. Not to mention all the unnecessary sex jokes which got old fast.

I really wanted to love this but I’m afraid I had to DNF. The dedication to diversity was admirable and I love fiction that spotlights any kind of geek community, but this ended up not being the right book for me. Best of luck.

I will not be reviewing or rating this book anywhere as I DNFed it. I really thought I would love this book, but it didn’t take long to feel like it was immature and just one long (bad) sex joke. I was super disappointed and chose not to continue the book.

The title of the book sounds like a lot of fun. Role playing games have the potential to go in just about any direction, and the fact that this was filled with LGBT representation had me excited.

Unfortunately, the book was just not well executed. Readers are overwhelmed with a slew of characters who were immaturely written, grappling with feelings in a very boring way. They went over and over their feelings without truly processing them, and their communication was abhorrent but never discussed as part of their character flaws. There was some character development, but it felt haphazard and abrupt. With tons of starts and stops, it was hard to decipher what was important to the overarching story, and instead left me feeling like a collection of moments had been thrown together in an attempt to make meaning where there was very little.

I picked it up and put it back down several times. I liked the DnD in-game parts better than the out-of-game scenes, but despite some occasional witty dialogue, it just wasn't enough to keep my attention.

I wasn't able to get into this one. I'm going to blame my complete and utter lack of knowledge about gaming.

The writing was great, but I'm afraid I didn't understand the shift from one reality to the fictional one. I do have a feeling that people who have played role playing games, will really enjoy this. The characters in the very first part of the book were fantastic but I got a bit lost when they "became" their characters. One of the things I liked for certain was how different and unique all of the characters were. There's someone for everyone to relate to in this book

What I did read... I enjoyed... just not the book for me because of my complete unfamiliarity with gaming. It's almost as if there are two stories - which I'm very sure will appeal to many readers.

[The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I dnf'ed this book because of this review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3855033255?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

DNF at 20%.

This story follows a rag-tag gang of adventurers who are actually characters in a Dungeons & Dragons session.

This story is very dialogue-heavy and fast past, not allowing for much in the way of descriptions of backgrounds and characters. When there are descriptions, it's...sex heavy.

There were a lot of problematic elements in this book, odd, considering you'd think this book targeting the LGBT+ audience would make the extra effort not to include said elements. Alas! The constant sex jokes were grating at a certain point, Mooneyham was incredibly infuriating, Ben the narrator, even more so.

An overly chaotic and confusing story with unlikable characters just made me put it down.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader's copy, though I apologize for not being able to finish it.

As a queer D&D player, I should have loved this. Instead this book was just ok. I had some issues with the Ben and I felt like some of the plotlines just weren't finished. There was such a build up of tension with all the characters and only Ben and Albert's storyline was finished. The vampire subplot was odd. I also wasn't a huge fan of how they handled the Campaign story parts. It wasn't incredibly interesting or exciting, and it just felt off.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me an ARC in exchange for a review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3879219698

I had picked up this book, expecting to be taken on a very cool D-n-D kinda adventure. I didn’t get to go on one, though. I’m listing some of my biggest turn-offs here. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for why things happened in the story. Add to that the fact that I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. The protagonist was whiny, spineless. Another of the main characters only thought about sex. Yes, teenagers do that but reading about was boring as heck! Also, these people were supposed to be tweens. With such a rainbow cast, I was expecting fireworks and not a meandering plot that made me ask why did I continue reading.

A really disappointing read!

The absolute best part of this book was how wonderfully nerd centric it was! Role playing, D&D, cosplay, comic books, action figures, video games, Ninja Turtles. It was all oh so wonderful.

And I really loved the way the book would move between reality and the game. We would be in the game play watching the characters go through it. Which was a really fun way to incorporate the fantasy element!

I enjoyed the beginning and most of the middle part of it. The characters were cute and I enjoyed getting to know them. But somewhere just past the halfway point we started getting chapters about more and more of the characters in the club and while I wanted to learn about them it felt like taking snippets of lots of things instead of big chunks of a few. Basically we only got to we only got to scrape the surface of everyone instead of really learning about them. I felt like some of the characters were cheated out of a real story. And then the ending kind of wrapped up too perfectly and too quickly and by focusing on only a couple of the characters.

I enjoyed the read and would recommend it but I did feel like the author was trying to hard in places. But it did have some really fun moments.

DNF at 15%

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the gifted review copy of this book.

I really wanted to love this book--Queer D&D sounded right up my alley! But I was immediately brought down by the blatant transphobia about 5 pages in, when the author decided to deadname a trans character for no apparent reason except to explain that they are trans? No. Uh uh. You do not do that. There was no purpose to this deadnaming at all except transphobia, whether intentional or not. I truly hope that line is removed from this book before the finished copy comes out.

The characters were also flat and uninteresting to me in the parts I read, and the weird emphasis on sex in all of the scenes and with the characters for no real reason felt... a little stereo-typy to me. I frankly find it unrealistic that this people who aren't even friends would be so blatantly talking about sex with each other, especially around someone brand new. It kinda felt like the hyper-sexual-queer stereotype in action.

I hope these issues with the representation are fixed before the final copy.

CW: Homophobia, Deadnaming, Sexual Content

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{Digital Copy provided by NetGalley and University of Iowa Press}

This is a short tale centered around a group of LGBTQ+ DnD players and their lives in Cleveland. There are quite a few characters and their group dynamics were very interesting. I especially enjoyed Mooneyham’s experience being gay in a corporate environment as well as his relationship with Huey. I didn’t care too much about Ben and his relationship troubles, however. Not a lot happens in this book, which makes it a bit boring. But the twenty-somethings trials of figuring yourself out and what you want to do in life were very well done and realistic in my opinion. As an amateur DnD player I also appreciated the passionate and detail-oriented portrayal of it in this story.

If you like role playing games, queer characters, and a slice-of-life type of story, this is the book for you!

2.5 stars

This title got me; I had to know.

The concept behind this book - which is clearly indicated in the title - is riveting, but the execution is something else. In many ways, the dialogue and flow feel reminiscent of a first year creative writing course. That's not the slam it may sound like: good ideas but tighter execution needed.

I do think there is a niche audience for whom this book is written, and I really wish I were in it.

I really thought this book was going to work for me, but it just didn't. The characters were so stereotypical, the dialogue was cringey, and the writing was subpar. Instead of feeling like an homage to dungeons and dragons, it felt like he was making fun of it.

i hate to say it, but this book was so disappointing. it features way too many characters to keep track off and the perspectives keep changing. i usually like 3rd POV, but here it made me feel so disconnected from ALL characters. there was too much distance and it made the characters feel so unrelatable.

more things i disliked:
• usage of a slur against Romani
• way too many unnecessary "sex jokes"
• female characters felt lflat
• feels like it's written for the cis gay white gaze and not so much for the whole LGBTQ+ community (like the title would suggest..)
• hp references

i received a digital arc by netgalley in exchange for an honest opinion

I picked up tCHLGBTQSFaFRPC... hm, even the acronym needs an acronym... I picked up CH on a whim, my attention piqued by the lovely cover and a title that hinted a good cast of characters engaged in nerdy pursuits. In general, the book did deliver on this, but I walked away rather unsatisfied by several of the story's subplots and disappointed with the flatness and lack of growth of some of the characters.

My perspective already colored by similar books in YA and LGBTQ circles, I went in expecting a perhaps a D&D campaign to which our cast to escape into as we see the struggles in their 'real' non-game lives where the character arcs or campaign arc would eventually begin to mirror/help shed light on their non-game lives. While this duel-narrative existed, they felt rather disconnected, and I found myself increasingly annoyed by the interruptions in the 'real' world story lines by the D&D segments of gameplay. While the club gives the cast a natural meeting place, these segments are heavily narrative with minimal direct character interaction and rather predictable story beats. I would love to have seen more of our DM's perspective of her thought process and choices in designing these encounters, not just watching it play out.

In between the D&D segments, we get to see each character's life during the rest of the week. It was with these segments that I felt most engaged, and I generally liked each character. However, as the book proceeded, it seemed like the character arcs were not really moving at all, each character staying in roughly the same position physically, emotionally, and spiritually that they were at the beginning. By the end, the only real notable changes I saw were in a handful of secondary characters our mains regularly interacted with. While I don't expect every character to have a significant arc, either positive or negative, I'm unable to name one main character who truly grew either in game or out of it. For all that happened in the book, nothing really felt significant or permanent, rather like a cartoon resetting to the status quo at the end.

In the end, it was a solid premise that never quite wrapped up for me in a satisfactory way ( and I'm still confused about the vampire sub-plot). While the characters didn't feel like outright stereotypes, by the end, they felt flat and predictable rather than like friends whose stories I was invested in. Don't get me wrong; I did enjoy the read as there were scenes I really enjoyed and lines that I laughed at, but looking at it as a whole, I feel I expected more than the book was able to deliver.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC; the opinions expressed above are mine and mine alone.

It's quirky and different! Reminds me a little but of The Adventure Zone podcast with the humor and breaking of the fourth wall.

A touching story of finding your way through life and love. The story follows a group of nerds who meet weekly to send their paladins, wizards and bards on magical adventures. Each player has real life issues of loneliness, acceptance and terrible awkwardness that seem to follow them through the adventures in the game. When a new handsome player enters the game, it shakes up the friends in unforeseen ways. The characters in the game have enemies to contend with and that mirrors events in the real world for the players.
Even though I am not a gamer, I've had enough exposure to it to appreciate the love the players have for the game and truly did find myself laughing out loud numerous times. There is a wonderful mix of humor and longing that feels very much like the gang in the movie The Breakfast Club. I enjoyed the story of the game and really would have loved more of it, and it was woven into the larger story very effectively. It doesn't matter if you have never been a gamer or are unfamiliar with D&D, you can find connections to these characters and their struggles with discrimination and intimacy.