Kristy Boyce's DUNGEONS AND DRAMA

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the digital ARC of Kristy Boyce’s Dungeons and Drama. The book will be published on Tuesday!

Kristy Boyce’s Dungeons and Drama is a fantastic YA romance, a fake dating story, and a tribute to all things D&D and musical theater.

After an ill-conceived (and illegal) trip with her best friend Hoshiko to see Waitress—a trip that involved “borrowing” her mom’s car and driving hours away without a license—Riley is sentenced to a life without extracurriculars, working in her dad’s gaming store every day after school. This punishment is extreme: Riley and her dad haven’t had much of a relationship since her parents’ divorce, she hates gaming, and her extracurriculars are the center of her world. But it’s what she has to do if she wants to be released from her banishment from society in time for the musical, for which she is determined to earn a position as student director.

At first, her time at the story confirms all of her fears: she doesn’t understand gaming, the other employee (Nathan) is a jerk, and her relationship with her father is as distant as ever. Her situation begins to change when an awkward run-in with her ex and his new girlfriend leads her to proclaim that she’s also in a relationship . . . with Nathan.

What ensues is a quid pro quo with Nathan: he’ll pretend to be her boyfriend to save face with her ex, and she’ll act like she’s head over heels for him as a way to attract his crush, a fellow D&Der who only wants what she can’t have.

Soon, those fake feelings begin to feel more real, at least for Riley.

I enjoyed so much about Boyce’s world here: she describes the passion of devotees everywhere, finding the commonalities between the worlds of gaming and musical theater as Riley performs her way through a D&D campaign as a bard and Nathan and his friends pitch in to help Riley and Hoshiko save the musical (which the school is trying to cancel). Riley is also working on her relationship with her father, and I appreciated the way each comes to appreciate the other’s passion. As both a big fan of musical theater and the mother of a devoted D&D player, it was fun to see the creativity and passion of both realms represented here.

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