Book Description 

It’s friends-to-enemies-to-friends-to-lovers in this LGBTQIA+ Romance for fans of Red, White & Royal Blue and The Pros of Cons.

Milo Lionetti is not a gamer. Not even close. But when a stupid bet costs him his brother’s prized cards, he’ll do anything to replace them before anyone notices they’re gone. To do that, he’ll need a little help from the best gamer he knows…who also happens to hate him.

Jasper Quigley is known for moonlighting on a popular gaming blog, but he’s eager to stop playing the sidekick. The last thing he wants is to help out Milo and dredge up feelings he’d rather forget. But helping Milo comes with some perks, including getting his help running a cosplay event at the local children’s hospital. All that forced proximity was not supposed to come with kissing, and definitely not falling in love…

My Review

The worldbuilding in this book is great, specifically the card game that the two protagonists play. Yes, it’s clearly based on popular card games like Magic the Gathering, but still, there was clearly a lot of thought that went into crafting the game mechanics, the lore, etc. 

The characters are in college and they come off as young for their supposed ages. That said, there’s a nice blend of (ex) friends to lovers and a bit of second chance too, as they are reuniting after drifting apart several years ago. 

The plot features Jasper helping Milo make things right and that involves them spending a lot of time together. It’s pretty exciting to see them getting closer to achieve that goal as the deadline looms. 

Speaking of getting closer, their chemistry is fine. It’s nothing spectacular, and at one point, one of them said something like, “He looked at me like a baby looks at candy” and no thank you to any of that. Who wants to think of babies at a time like that, not to mention such a tired cliche. As the youth say, it was cringe. 

I would recommend Out of Character. Readers don’t have to read the first book in the series in order to understand this one. 

I received a digital ARC of this book from Sourcebooks/NetGalley.