it's all fun and games until you fall in love

Rose Marie Jones is all about Game Night with her friends. Most of the week is spent with her dividing her time between her demanding job as an investment analyst and her working on her MBA. She has a boyfriend, but he’s busy with his marketing job and sometimes they have a hard time connecting. But Game Night with her roommate Neema, her work friend (and Neema’s boyfriend) Shaun, Shaun’s half-brother William, and her boyfriend Patrick when he can get away from work, is the highlight of Rose’s week.

But when Rose sees a competition for board game creators, her heart skips a beat. As a kid, she dreamed of creating board games and started making one of her own. But she’ll need to finish it if she wants to enter the contest, and the best person to help her with that is William, her gaming nemesis. He’s always teasing her, and they tend to be evenly matched in competitions. But he created and sold a popular video game, so he has the most experience in creating a game that people actually want to play.

Rose and William get stuck spending more time together as they work on Rose’s game, but also because they are the Maid of Honor and Best Man in Neema and Shaun’s wedding. As the game starts to come together, sparks fly between the two, but Rose already has a five-year plan, and William isn’t on it. But then, neither is feeling increasingly uncomfortable in her job or feeling distant from Patrick. Rose finds herself rolling the dice on her future, but will she figure out how to win at life? Or will she find herself back at the start line all alone?

Playing Flirty is a nerdy rom com about game enthusiasts who fall in love. There is a lot of clever banter with these smart characters, and a lot of board game and video game talk for gamers who love rom coms. This is a slow burn with an inevitable conclusion, but the trips around the board to get to the happy ever after is a charming journey.

I really enjoyed Playing Flirty. It’s not perfect, but there is a lot to love about this book. There were a couple of situations where abusive relationships were glossed over, and I think the story would have been stronger had those situations either been left out or resolved more realistically, but I did still have a great time with this book. There are some laugh out loud moments, and Rose’s parents, modern-day hippies, were absolutely charming. I definitely enjoyed the gaming aspects, and I thought the relationship between Rose and William was very sweet. Overall, I enjoyed it and I think other board game nerds will too.

Egalleys for Playing Flirty were provided by Forever through NetGalley, with many thanks.