Well, I wasn't really wanting to see the title taken so literally as truly the only reason Luke got together with Lorelai is because he took pity on her.

Not a good reason to have a love story, as who wants someone only because they pity you?

That being said; all her childhood antics to get Luke's attention just had me laughing. Like - a powerpoint? How freaking cute and embarrassing is that? Luke didn't come across as anything special so I wasn't really sure why she was so obsessed with him. I didn't really feel much from the two of them, there was no chemistry or connection, but it was a decent enough read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for this e-arc in exchange for honest review.

This book is pure small-town sunshine with just the right touch of longing and slow-burn sweetness. The brother’s best friend trope always owns my heart, but this one hit different because the tension is built on years of quiet hope and unspoken feelings. The chemistry between them simmers in the background until it finally snaps, and when it does, it’s everything I wanted and more. The writing is warm, funny, and honest, especially in those softer moments where doubt slips in and feelings get messy. The romance is swoony, the banter feels natural, and the emotional payoff is so worth it. This story gave me that fluttery feeling you only get when a long-held crush finally has a chance to bloom. It’s cozy, heartfelt, and full of charm.

Wow! This was such a fun read! The banter and will they won’t they as Luke and Lorelei get to know each other as adults was amazing! Very little spice, but honestly the dialogue made up for it.

Pity Play is the sixth installment in the Pity series, but it was not my favourite of the three I’ve read. Lorelai loves living in Elk Lake. She’s lived with her parents since her breakup three years earlier. She’s very busy doing things to avoid making decisions about her future. Luke, her brother’s best friend, returns to town after his father’s accident to help out at the family restaurant and mend his relationship with him. Noah, Lorelai’s brother, asks her if Luke can stay with her. Seeing as she’s had a mad crush on him most of her life, she happily accepts.

I never really warmed up to Luke or Lorelai. Lorelai, despite being kind and generous, was really immature. She kept saying she was over her crush on Luke but everything she did said the opposite. She was continually upset with Noah and her parents for their candor about their wish that she moves forward with her life. Luke was such a jerk when the book started. He was short and impatient. At times his thoughts were downright mean, especially with regard to Lorelai. They spent so much time avoiding one another that the switch in him with regard to seeing Lorelai as a romantic partner didn’t really make sense to me. Both MCs were stubborn and dead set on not moving from where they were living so both of them made decisions not to pursue a relationship with the other. I just never felt the chemistry. I was glad to see Lorelai take charge of her life and that Luke was able to understand his dad better.

Thank you to NetGalley, 33 Partners Publishing and Whitney Dineen for an advanced reader copy (eARC) in exchange for an honest review.

Whitney Dineen’s Pity series takes place in the small town of Elk Lake, Wisconsin. Full of well-rounded characters, this series of standalones reads better in publication order, since you’ll get the satisfaction of seeing what’s happening with the characters even after they cease to be the main focus. CAN you read them out of order? Sure. SHOULD you? That’s up to you.

All of these books feature women who have lots of spunk and personality, but haven’t been lucky in love. Many cover parental relationships, what it’s like to be a woman in business, and other issues reflected in modern society. None of the female leads is obsessed with appearance; all clearly enjoy good food and none is a size 2.

All have references to popular culture, just enough to ground them in the modern day. Recurring characters—even those who are not the focus of the story—are well rounded. It’s also fun to see the hints for what characters could be the focus of later books.

I also love the little bits of unimportant continuity, like the apartment above the yarn shop—first Melissa lives there, then Trina rents it for a summer, and finally, Lorelei considers moving there.

It’s now two years since the first book was published, as the sixth is hitting the market. Time passes a little faster in Elk Lake, as you will see with references to Pity Date’s Faith and Teddy in Pity Play.

Who Might Like These Books:
Romcom fans, especially those who like imperfect characters and small towns..

My Thoughts:
Lorelei has had a crush on Luke since childhood. And she wasn’t subtle about it. So when Luke needs to stay at her house while visiting his semi-estranged father in the hospital, he’s hesitant. But Lorelei is no longer the scruffy little carrot-top he remembers.

Lorelei is determined to stop embarrassing herself around Luke. She still finds him attractive—because he IS—but she’s trying to leave behind the desperation for his attention that she felt as a child. (There’s a really nice introspective moment later in the book where she thinks about this.)

I enjoyed Luke’s journey of discovery and reconciliation with his father. Lorelei’s character maybe needed a little more development. She’d spent a lot of time being kind of aimless and then just fell into a career path. I’m also pretty tired of female (or male for that matter) characters who can’t cook. Toaster strudels as the height of gourmet breakfast? That’s a no from me.

I didn’t much like Lorelei’s older brother Noah. His way of coaching high school basketball by basically insulting his students is not cool. His slobby ways as an adult—also not cool.

The biggest problem for me in this book is probably a nitpick for anyone else. The high school prom is early this year because the basketball team didn’t make the playoffs. Trust me…prom dates are set early in the year. You don’t just pull off a prom in a couple of weeks.

Overall, not the best of the series, but not bad. We got to see prior characters—Trina’s back again! The scene is set for Allie and Noah. I hope Noah learns to pick up his dirty clothes before he and Allie get serious.

Possible Objectionable Material:
Very mild cursing. Indications that unmarried adults have sex. Mention of LGBTQ people. Adults drink alcohol. Parental injury an estrangement.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book also reviewed at https://biblioquacious.blogspot.com/2025/04/its-pity.html

Pity Play is the sixth story in Whitney Dineen’s Pity romantic comedies set in Elk Lake, Wisconsin. Pity Play will be better understood and enjoyed if read after other stories in the Pity series, but it can be read as a standalone. This is a closed-door romance that doesn’t contain any sex or profanities.

28-year-old Lorelai has had a crush on her older brother’s best friend for as long as she can remember. After a bad break-up, she moved back to her hometown of Elk Lake, Wisconsin, to re-group. She’s house-sitting for her parents who are in Florida and managing a hotel’s gift shop, far from her career and life goals. When her brother, Noah, learns that Mr. Phillips is hospitalized and his son will have to come home for a while to run the family restaurant, he offers for Luke to stay at his family’s home. Luke and his father have a strained relationship so it’s better for Luke to stay with Lorelai. Luke is oblivious to Lorelai’s feelings.

Luke is shocked when he sees the grown-up, beautiful Lorelai. He’s not interested in forming any relationships in Elk Lake because he has an important career waiting for him in Chicago. They become attracted to each other and then kiss. However they both have a lot of character development to undergo before they can figure out if they possibly have a future together.

I have enjoyed all of the Pity stories, and Pity Play is my favorite so far! I just love a good childhood crush story, and the chemistry between Lorelai and Luke is so great. The realistic family dynamics and tension make this story relatable, as does Lorelai’s being “stuck” in her career and life goals. I also loved The Gilmore Girls references. I really hope that the author will write Allie and Noah’s story next!!

I received an advance review copy (ARC) from NetGalley and the author for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

As someone that is obsessed with a good small town romance trope AND a best friend's brother trope, I was instantly drawn to this story. I will say it took me a while to get into it. It was definitely a little slow for me personally at the beginning of the story. I did like the main characters, and I enjoyed their relationship but I think I would've liked to see it "built" a bit more.

This was a solid 3.5/4 for me, and I did really enjoy reading through this story.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

This is another fun read in the Pity series - I haven't read them all, but they're entertaining. This could easily be a stand alone read, but I'd recommend checking out the full series.

Luke is a successful restaurant owner/chef in Chicago and is headed back home to make amends with his father, who's recovering from a fall. They've had an estranged relationship since Luke opened his own restaurant instead of working at his father's. Luke needs a place to stay while he's back in town and his best friend arranges it with his sister to let him stay in their family home. Lorelai has had a crush on Luke since they were kids. She's back home working at the lodge gift shop and taking care of the family home while her parents are in Florida. She's kind of in a rut, after a break up and moving back home. It's a fast paced, sweet, brother's best friend trope.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a temporary, digital ARC in return for my review.

I am still very much in love with Elk Lake. But not so much with this installment.

Lorelei is a fangirl, she's been in love with Luke since childhood. Luke is her brother's best friend whom she doesn't know so well and who dismissed her her entire teen years (and most of the first half of the book really).

Lorelei hasn't grown so much since adolescence, she's still in love with the idea of Luke and lives at her parents' while they're gone.

Luke comes back to Elk Lake to take care of his father's restaurant while he's at the hospital and stays at Lorelei's.

Luke doesn't sound interested in Lorelei at all and I don't know exactly how it suddently changes.

I really liked Luke's backstory, it's the most interesting part of the book, imo.

I know about Gilmore Girls as a show, but I have no clue what it is about. So if they were some references that I should have had liked, that could have helped me understand Luke and Lorelei's dynamic, I missed them completely.

I really liked the idea of this novel but I couldn't see real chemistry between Luke and Lorelei.

Thank you to Netgalley and Whitney Dineen for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy from NetGalley
I think this is the best story in the series so far (one more to go) but in the first few chapters I was totally confused (and Luke too) why Lorelei would sleep in her parents' bedroom while they were away when she had a perfectly good bedroom of her own, with all her personal stuff to beat; it came back multiple times and I got confused even more. Luke asked the info desk for his father's room number; why didn't his mother gave it to him when she called? Lorelei took off her coat before coming into the house. All of those were weird too. Favorite wake-up: "I'm done making choices based on other people's dreams". It's not a classic love story but I could see how they liked, respected, and loved each other; even if Lorelei was a puppy love, she grew out of it, it became mature, and it paid off. Could be a trigger: Two MM couples.

“I’ve learned so much during this trip that it’s going to take me a while to unpack it all. I’ve learned that while we don’t live for others, we must always consider their feelings. Life, while often construed as a singular journey, is so much more than that. It’s an adventure that, if lived right, includes compromise and concessions. Bending doesn’t break us; it gives us more resilience and strength to handle whatever else might come.” Lorelei and Luke’s love story is so much more. Sweet, witty, embarrassed and profound moments that keep you hooked until the end.

I can’t help but feel that the title is, sadly, very apt—and that they got together simply because he took pity on her.

Lorelei has been in love with Luke since she was five. As a kid, she never hid it, even going to embarrassing lengths—like making a PowerPoint to convince him to wait for her (wtf😳).

Then she grew up and moved on. Mostly.

Since Luke was never interested, her feelings made him uncomfortable, and even years later, he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about staying under the same roof. (Somehow, this was the only possible/best option—because romcom logic.)

It was a cute, squeaky-clean book, which was nice. I also loved that the brother, albeit clumsily, played matchmaker. I’m sick of brothers freaking out when their sisters get together with their friends, so this was a refreshing change.

Unfortunately, this book didn’t make me feel much. I didn’t quite get Lorelei’s obsession with Luke—he was nice, but really nothing special. There was barely any chemistry between them, and the romance came out of nowhere.

It was a pleasant story, but I’m not tempted to read the rest of the series at the moment.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

📚 BookTok Review: Pity Play by Whitney Dineen 🎭💘

If you love brother’s best friend and forced proximity tropes, Pity Play is your next cozy rom-com read! When Evie’s longtime crush, Luke, needs a place to stay, sparks (and plenty of awkward moments) start flying in their small-town world.

✨ What to Expect:
🏡 Small-town charm & witty banter
💘 Slow-burn romance with all the feels
😂 Laugh-out-loud moments & lovable characters

A heartwarming, Gilmore Girls-esque romance full of charm, chemistry, and second chances! 💖📖

#PityPlay #WhitneyDineen #SmallTownRomance #BrothersBestFriend #BookTokRecs

Gilmore Girls Yet Not Gilmore Girls. He's Luke and he works in a diner. She's Lorelai and she wants to run a bed and breakfast. Stars Hollow? NOPE! Equally fictional and equally charming Elk Lake. But yes, the Gilmore Girls comparisons, at least at a very high level, are simply too blatant to be completely ignored.

This noted, Dineen *does* do her own thing and *does* manage to tell a tale completely different than anything I remember from Gilmore Girls. (Don't hate me, but despite Lauren Graham being hot, it just wasn't a series I could ever really get into. Sorry, ladies!)

Here, the angst is arguably done better than the romance, and indeed it often seems at times that this ostensibly romance book keeps its central couple apart far more than they're together, with the togetherness coming in very tentative and awkward steps at first before "suddenly out of no where" kind of exploding... after a damn near fatal implosion first, of course.

But truly the most relatable part of this for me personally was in fact Luke's story, and even his dad's story. While I know at least *some* of my dad's story (more than Luke does throughout a large part of the tale here), like Luke, there are absolutely things I don't know - and will never know - about my dad's childhood and my grandfather (who in my case died just five weeks after my birth). Like Luke, as an adult I've had to try to come to understand my dad through the bits and pieces of his history I've learned, and how that has shaped him into the man he chose to become... and thus how it shaped how he raised me and shaped me into the man I chose to become. While I never lost years of our lives due to a misunderstanding, that's not to say there haven't been misunderstandings along the way (including one particularly infamous one when I was a teenager that was perhaps the closest we ever got to this level of blowup). So... yeah, Luke's story absolutely hit a touch harder here.

Overall while this seemed to be probably the most angsty book in the series, there really was quite a bit of fun and self discovery along the way as well, and it really was both a solid entrant in the series and a solid setup for a seeming near-direct sequel.

Very much recommended.

Pity Play is the 6th book in Whitney Dineen’s Pity series. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the previous books, they can all easily be read as standalones, though they are so cute you’ll likely want to read them. And while Pity Present (which was book 5) is still my favorite of the series, I throughly enjoyed Luke and Lorelai’s tale. Lorelai has been in love with her brother’s best friend for as long as she can remember, but she’d love given up hope of anything ever happening. (Okay so maybe she still keeps up on him via social media). After all he moved away and is now a successful chef. But when Luke’s father ends up in the hospital he comes back home and needs a place to stay, Lorelai’s brother convinces her to let him stay with her at their parent’s house. So right off the bat we have the fun tropes of close proximity and brother’s best friend. Oh, and both Lorelai and Luke have both gone through breakups so both are currently single. But there is no possibility of things happen between them, right? After all Luke is only in town for a sort time to help his family and makes things right between himself and his dad. Of course love has a way of disregarding everyone’s plans and intentions and before we know it things begin to happen between them. While I already said Pity Present is my favorite of this series, Pity Play is still a lot of fun story and well worth the time. I’d like to thank the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of Pity Play.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1FP5AY7ZQUKMN/ref=pe_123899240_1043597390_SRTC0204BT_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

I picked up Pity Play without having read anything from Whitney Dineen before, nor any of the previous books in this series, but the gorgeous cover immediately pulled me in. And while I genuinely enjoyed the book because it was a quick, easy read with a fun small town setting, I have some mixed feelings about it.

The biggest thing that stood out to me? This book is essentially Luke and Lorelai from Gilmore Girls fanfiction. And I don’t mean that lightly, because the names, the character dynamics, and even the diner/B&B dreams are all straight from Stars Hollow. The book even acknowledges it, which made it feel less like a fun homage and more like a direct copy paste. If you’re a Gilmore Girls fan, this might be fun, but if not, it could feel a bit too familiar.

As for the romance, it had some frustrating elements. Luke spends half the book looking at Lorelai as his best friend’s annoying little sister, even going so far as to say she’s not all that attractive at first. Then, almost out of nowhere, he suddenly starts seeing her as a romantic partner. I love a good slow burn, but this felt more like an emotional switch was flipped rather than a natural progression.

That said, I did enjoy the supporting characters (who clearly have history from previous books), the dual POV, and the cozy small town vibes. It wasn’t a standout read for me, and is not one of my favorites, but it was a fun, rom com for an easy weekend read.

Would I recommend it? If you love Gilmore Girls and don’t mind a very on the nose retelling, then yes! Otherwise, you might find the similarities a little too distracting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Whitney Dineen for the eARC of this book.

Lorelai was in a rut and not really moving with her life.
Luke is estranged from his family but returns to Wisconsin when his father needs help.
For being a rather hapless Neanderthal Lorelai’s brother Noah is the key instigator.
I liked how both characters figure out their stuff but also wanted to retain the small town coziness.
Life just can’t be all work but you also have to live it and not must be bumble along daily.
I’m eager to read Noah’s story next because he needs put to rights!

Pity Play Arc Review 📚😉

Synopsis:
Lorelei, a 28-year-old woman, had recently moved back into her parents' home while they were away on an extended vacation in Florida. She was taking some time to re-evaluate her life. Meanwhile, Luke, the best friend of her brother Noah, had returned to their hometown of Elk Lake after his father was injured. Luke had come back to help run the family restaurant and to mend his strained relationship with his father.
Although Luke didn’t want to stay with his own parents, Noah offered him a place to stay at their parents’ house while he was in town, and Luke accepted. This arrangement, however, was a little complicated for Lorelei—she had harbored a crush on Luke during their childhood.

My Thoughts 💭 :
Pity Play is just like a peak hallmark movie. Two love interest back in their hometown. One with a successful business, one trying to figure out what to do with their life. I really liked it! The only thing that was missing for me is spice or at least a little sexual tension. But, that’s just the type of book i usually gravitate toward. But if you’re looking for a short witty romance book that’s G rated this is perfect for you! The male main character, Luke grew on me throughout the book. At the beginning he was not exactly a fan of Lorelei, but after a bit of a slow burn his personality completely changed! Overall, I would give this book 3.5 stars ⭐️

Small Town ✅
Brothers Best Friend ✅
Forced Proximity ✅

This was a super cute and such a fast read. I love the 'Brothers Best Friend' trope so much. Lorelai has been in love with her brother's best friend since she was a young child. She is at a point in her life where she feels stuck just unmotivated to change it. Luke heads back to his small hometown to help his father out after an accident. Needing to repair that relationship, he stays with Lorelei at her parent's home. I really love that it wasn't one of those stories that they meet again after so many years and fall in love without getting to know each other. My favorite part was his surprise at the end. A man that can cook, loves his family, and cares enough to do something like that. I would of loved to see more relationship building. But other than that, no complaints.

Pity Play is the sixth book in the Pity series. I've only read one of the previous books and found I could still enjoy this one just fine as a standalone.

This was a cute read... and one that fans of Gilmore Girls are certainly going to appreciate--- I mean the main characters names ARE Luke and Lorelai after all... and yes, he does feed her throughout the story too! Lorelei is Luke's best friend's little sister (a favorite trope of mine) and he has never seen her as anything but... even when he finds himself staying with her after years apart, he still very much sees her as that annoying little sister figure... but the more time they spend together, the more he starts to see her in a very different light. These two had a really fun and unique dynamic, definitely a bit of a slower burn. These two both had some family and personal issues that they had to overcome throughout the story as well, and I enjoyed seeing their growth throughout. While I did enjoy this story and thought it was cute, I would definitely say that there are other books by this author that I preferred. I'm not sure why, but I did find I didn't quite connect with it as much as I'd hoped.

Pity Play is a closed-door romance with kisses only.


*ARC received via Netgalley for consideration.