Ended up picking this up on release and then forgot to leave a review for this, but I had high hopes for this premise that weren't really delivered. I hope this book finds its audience though, because I'm sure for some people this will be exactly what they're looking for.

This is overdue because I completely forgot to write the review. I’ve heard boyfriend & Husband material early in my reading journey and was so excited to get this as an arc. I remember absolutely loving them. Sadly 4 years later I think I’ve outgrown and my taste has changed so I will be DNFing. There wasn’t a specific thing that made me DNF but as time goes on people change and it’s the exact same with reading

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book, but I was very pleasantly surprised. I ended up finishing the book in just a few sittings and really enjoyed the story and characters.

Drew quit his gaming guild and joined a less intense one. He begins to have fun playing the game again, and meets some cool people, including a character named Solace. He begins to catch feelings for them, but realizes that Solace is not a girl like he had thought. Drew has to come to terms with the fact that he still likes him, and navigate a new relationship that looks a little different than one he ever thought he'd have.

This was hard to get into. The heavily gamer jargon and not much going on for the first quarter of the book made me struggle, but it began picking up and I liked the scenes with Drew and Kit together. Then... it kind of fell apart for me.
It just seemed like the characters were early high school instead of college aged to me for some reason, probably because of the lack of emotional intelligence. Drew was just a walking red flag this whole book. First with getting mad that Kit wasn't a girl, then all the other fights they got in. I feel like I probably won't be revisiting her books again after not loving Boyfriend Material either.

I rated it 2/5 stars.
Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the e-arc!

This story spoke to my inner nerd as someone who loves MMO and RPG games I was right in my niche it felt like being right in the midst of ESO. Now for anyone outside of this gamer world, is going to be slammed with a lot of lingo and chat term. Even I had to flip to the appendix constantly which takes you out of the atmosphere. I do feel like there is a specific reader in mind for this story and is not going to translate to just anyone, so keep that in mind. Otherwise it was very much the vibes of Heartstopper, where our main character (Drew) is a high ranking tank in the game, Heroes of Legend. After joining a new group gets feelings for one of his guild members whose life and world is this game and vastly different than Drew’s. Thank you NetGalley for the Arc!

As a video game fan, I felt seen by this book. It was such a feel-good book in the classic Alexis Hall voice-humorous and emotional.

this was cute but the pacing felt super weird at the end. also i dont think people who have never played an mmo will connect much with this book? i did play an mmo for like 4 years and thought the game aspects and terms were cute. maybe it just needed more balance in and out of the game?

I’ve never played any game ever in my whole life and probably never will, so when this book started with a game scene it was a little confusing for me.
There’s a glossary but I just honestly was too lazy to look up every fifth word and it kept disrupting my reading flow.
So I decided to do what I always do: go on in blissful ignorance. And this is honestly the best advice I can give you. 😂

Drew is a massive gaming nerd, currently studying to become a game designer. So that a big chunk of this would be game scenes shouldn’t have been as surprising to me.
Fortunately as the book goes on and Drew falls for a person he’s never met irl, but really wants to we get other scenes as well!

This has the usual fun group of friends and humour we know from other Alexis Hall books and they alway really work for me.
I really shipped our main characters a lot, this was a super sweet romance with a questioning queer MC and I really loved the soft and easy way this was described.

This book will be a 5/5 for every gamer nerd and WoW lover. For me personally there were just a little too many gaming scenes and maybe not enough plot to give it a higher rating, but I still enjoyed this a lot!

I loved Boyfriend Material, so when I saw Looking for Group appear on NetGalley, I had to request it. I was so happy to be gifted an eARC by Sourcebooks CASABLANCA. Thank you!

Looking for Group is for anyone who wants to read a feel-good romance with some fun banter, advanced video gaming, and a mistaken identity trope. I was incredibly thankful for the glossary of gaming terms and abbreviations or I would have been utterly lost. If you are in to gaming, I'm sure you will appreciate the description of raids and all the chat and keystrokes. It was new to me, but I still caught on to the jargon and had a blast. I have never played a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), but it sounds like a lot of fun!

I enjoyed seeing Drew and Kit's relationship build from being fully online, to being in person. I was really rooting for them both in and out of the game.

Thank you again to NetGalley and Sourcebooks CASABLANCA for the gift of Looking for Group. It was a fun read that I highly recommend!

Looking for Group by Alexis Hall is delightful and I could not put it down! Literally devoured it in one sitting, and enjoyed every moment. The book is very readable because much of the dialogue is delivered through gaming chats. I have no background in gaming whatsoever, and it didn't dampen my enjoyment one bit. Others who are more familiar with online games might get more of the references, but as someone who went into it for the relationship aspect, I still loved it, even the battle scenes inside the game! I really enjoyed the relationship between Drew and Kit. I was surprised at how much depth and realism came through in their relationship, depicting lots of character growth around accepting yourself and not trying to change to fit other people's expectations. The banter and friendships among the group members were heartwarming, as well. Such as sweet and nerdy book, I loved it!

Looking for Group is such a warm, nerdy delight. Alexis Hall captures the chaos and comfort of online spaces perfectly—the banter, the late-night gaming sessions, and how friendships can turn into something more. Drew and Kit’s relationship is awkward, funny, and so tender it made me smile constantly.

It drags a little in the middle with the game details, and the ending felt a bit rushed, but overall this was a comforting, feel-good read about love and finding your people where you least expect it.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

I DNF'd this one at 10%

This one sounded so much fun. I am a gamer myself and these type of books about character who game always catch my eye. Sadly I just couldn't get into this book. The characters play a MMORPG game, a genre of games I am not very familiar with myself. While a lot of the terms and abbreviations get explained at the start of the book I couldn't remember everything and didn't know all the terms beforehand yet, so it was a struggle trying to remember what everything meant. I can't imagine how much harder this would be for someone who isn't familiar with games and any of these terms.

Then a lot of the book was the character talking in chat to each other and I just struggled to get into the story and have a good idea of what was happening. And the chat style writing just didn't work for me. This probably is also due to me trying to read it while still dealing with some stress and it just took too much effort to read this book.

I feel as though there was half a good book in here. While I do think that the game itself was created beautifully and described as effectively as it could be within the pages of a book, I do think that some of that description really was superfluous to the plot and didn't add as much to character development as the composite in person scenes. It might have belonged more in a sci-fi/fantasy where the events in the game were relevant to the story, rather than a romance.

But this is the book we were given. Both Drew and Kit are players of the same online game. Drew begins the story after having rage quit his previous guild and realising that none of the people in there really cared about him or contacted him outside of the game. Kit is an existing player in the new guild and sees all of the guild members as the only friends he has.

This is where the wheels fell off for me. I have online friends that I share common interests with, but they don't replace the spots that in person friends and family have for me. I've also been in a situation where I've been the 'widow' to a person whose guild friends were the most important thing.

When Drew's friend makes a comment about the possible addiction of both Drew and Kit to the game, I applauded Drew's steps towards stepping more into the real world with the new partner he had in Kit. This was... apparently not the beat that the story was trying to write. As a result, I felt very disconnected from the second half of the book and its resolution. It's possible I'm not the target audience of a book like this.

I feel as though anyone who has ever played a MMORPG like this, or even enjoys board games and other typical 'nerd' hobbies are going to absolutely love the various nods thrown in here. I felt like much of the dialogue could have been between friends of mine and I knew enough about MMORPGs in general to be able to follow without the extensive glossary at the start of this book that I hadn't taken for granted is something all nerds tend to pick up over time.

This was not the book for me. I liked the premise, but half of the book being game chat and game lingo... I could not get into it. I'm not a gamer, so maybe it's just me, but it was just too much.

Looking for Group by Alexis Hall
this is a cute online gaming romance. But it's very heavy on the gaming aspect. I think that a person who already is into games might have a better time than me.
there is a lot of game play and chat.
the author kindly supplied a glossary for noobs like me, but it was a bit overwhelming. the two main characters are cute and the romance hit the mark.
Even though I didn't really resonate with the main aspect of the story, I still enjoyed reading it and that isn't easy.

“…that wasn’t even the worst movie I’ve ever seen.”
“It wasn’t even the worst Nicolas Cage movie I’ve ever seen.”

This quote from chapter two sums up my feelings about Looking for Group. This isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, nor is it the worst in this particular genre I’ve ever read.

As some who is a non-binary queer gamer, I appreciate what Alexis set out to do in this novel. Love is love and it’s wonderful to see stories that I can relate to on page. However, I found myself flying through this - not out of enjoyment, but out of a desire to be done with the book.

I struggled with the writing when it came to the online ttrpg setting. The language felt outdated, the scenes felt clunky, and I frequently found myself having to reread passage to understand the setting. Imagine to my surprise when I found out this novel was first published a decade ago - which explained the endless footnotes and large author’s note at the end (no really, the AN takes up 10% of this book. Let’s pause on this, and we’ll come back to it later). The cheeky guide at the beginning was a nice nod to the gamers who will be reading this, but I found myself (a seasoned MOBA, rpg, and table top player) struggling to understand the shorthand. I can’t imagine what it would be like to read this as a cozy or casual gamer (disappointed and confused are two words that come to mind). While some references will be ubiquitous to all gamers, there are going to be specifics that will leave anyone who hasn’t played a mmorpg to scratch their heads. The formatting for the speaking parts was also clunky. I had no clue who was talking when as the indicators for who was talking in text chat was not present.

For as much as I struggled with the writing aspects above, I found the out-of-game scenes to be well written. At times I felt like I was just reading a transcript of my friends’ adventures online. I may not have understood it at every turn, but I was backseat gaming(re:observing) and really enjoying it. The banter and situations reminded me a lot of shenanigans I’ve gotten up to with my friends. The overall plot was a little thin - putting this novel staunchly in cozy reading territory. Nothing crazy really happens, there’s really no stakes, the boys are both supported by their friend groups, and the biggest conflict is learning how to communicate clearly. Alot of fluff for how intensive the gaming dictionary at the front is.

Okay, time to unpause that incoming /rant. WHY IS THERE SUCH A LARGE SECTION FOR THE AN???? Imagine you buy a book to find that decent portion is just dedicated to the author reminiscing about when she wrote it. I don’t want to spend my time being yanked from the story to flip furiously through the annotations to figure out why my attention was broken in the first place. If you’re reading this on an e-reader it’s a NIGHTMARE. Why did we spend so much time writing these blurbs and annotating when the time could have been better spent to refresh and update this edition? Maybe market it as a special annotated edition with no changes? I can’t imagine how much more upset I would be had I thought I was getting a fresh story to find that it’s a decade old novel where a chunk is stuff that isn’t adding to the narrative.
/endrant

Overall, this book is a pass for me, however if I find people looking for books like this, I won’t hesitate to recommend. While this isn’t for me (and I’m a bit bummed about it), I know that someone out there will absolutely adore this story. A decent book with a fun premise, but a little too niche (and with a steep learning curve for not enough payoff) to appeal to most gamers and queer readers.

This book was a challenge for me because the last video game I played was Mario Bros. 3 decades ago, and I've never played a MMO. I must say that the glossary at the beginning was a big help for someone with zero experience in this world as me; I went back to the glossary several times when the MCs were playing the game and to understand Guild conversations during raids. However, it did get easier the more I advanced in the story.

I imagine this would be a lot easier to read for people who actually play MMO, and I love that there are books like this because I think it could appeal to an audience that usually says, "I don't like to read." I'm of the opinion they just haven't found something that gets their attention, and maybe this story could get the attention of those MMO players who maybe think they don't like to read.

I really liked this discussion of 'real friends' vs 'virtual friends' because there was a moment in my life when I discovered Fanfiction and met lots of people and I used to talk to them SO much and my mom would go like, "You don't even know these people." I seriously felt, still do, that I knew some of those people better than some people I spent time with in 'real life', so I could get conflict Drew was having and I completely understood Kit's POV.

I know this book was first published a while back, and it's being re-published or something. I'm guessing there could be people who will be able to tell that Multiplayer Online Games have advanced since the one that inspired this book was popular, but that was not an issue for me. I'm happy for that Bonus Scene we get because it gave me a little inside into their future and I always love when I get that!

Thank you to Sourcebooks Casablanca for this eARC. This was a very different kind of read for me. Infact I listened along with an audiobook version the whole time to help keep me in the world. And the audiobook is really well produced and fully casted and everything it’s awesome. The only thing holding me back from 5 stars is that I don’t really agree Drew was in the wrong completely in their big conflict. He handled it wrong but Kit should have seen how one sided things were becoming. This is a good read though, having most of it in the chat of the game was a very different vibe that I did have some fun with.

*Thank you to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

MM romance? Good. Nerdy gaming? Good. So why wouldn't them together be great?

There was something about the constant abbreviations and the fact that most of the story was told over chat that just didn't hit for me. I couldn't understand why the main characters fell for each other. I almost would've rather this book be more of a contemporary because the romance felt forced. Did I like the MMORPG? Yes. I just don't think that this book was the one for me.