Looking for Group

November through January has historically been a heavy romance season for me, and Looking for Group definitely jumpstarted that process. It was a bit of an impulse buy. Alexis Hall has been hit or miss for me, but the nerdy vibes of a video-game focused romance caught my eye. Also, the cover art is gorgeous (though inaccurate to the point of infuriating me. The whole schtick is that the love interest hates high elves and only plays dark elves … so why is a high elf on the cover? Also the humans are above the wrong characters).  ANYWAYS. This book won me over by successfully executing romance plotlines with realistic characters and pacing, which I really enjoyed. If anyone else has good recs for other down-to-earth romances, I’m all ears!

Elevator Pitch:
Drew is a pretty big nerd. He’s one of the strongest tanks in the MMORPG Heroes of Legend, but when his competitive guild gives a valuable loot drop to someone who will barely use it instead of him, he ragequits. To try and find the joy in the game again, he joins a casual (but skilled) guild, where he meets Solaris. He quickly starts to fall for her, until she turns out to be a he, and Drew has a bit of a crisis. Add onto that his inability to manage pressure from his friends and issues expressing himself without being a big of a jerk, and Drew is on track to potentially ruin something beautiful before its even begun.

What Worked for Me
This book kind of blew my mind. I love corny romances, and this definitely has its moments in that regard. However, I kept being struck by how realistic this whole book seemed. There was no meet-cute. Drew and Solaris quickly began to develop feelings for each other, but it wasn’t instalove. Characters had personalities, but weren’t a bundle of character traits with arbitrary character growth arcs. The two leads don’t need each other to be ‘fixed’. Their conflicts felt extremely realistic (and sometimes hit so close to home that I had to step away from the book out of anxiety), and their resolutions were almost always similarly grounded in reality. It’s got a happy ending, but it doesn’t feel like a manic fairytale like so many other romances do. I found myself sucked into the book, rooting for the two to succeed, and emotionally torn when Drew’s asshole tendencies reared their head.

I think part of this feeling was the extended detours into the fictional video game. This book has a lot of travelling around maps, descriptions of boss fights and tidbits of lore, and references to board game culture (of which I am a proud member!). These are going to bug a lot of people, but they worked as a pressure release valve for me. I don’t game much and didn’t know a lot of the terminology (there is a rather comprehensive glossary, but I chose not to use it much and just went with the flow unless I felt totally lost). This didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment, though I think it probably will for many. If you’re not open to extended nerd monologues about a fictional game, stay far away from this one.

I also just sort of appreciated the validation that internet friends are just as valid as in-person ones. I first came out to online friends whom I played Pokemon TTRPGs with on play-by-post forums. They were a huge part of my life for around 10 years and had a big impact on who I became. Drew’s attitude – that real life friends are intrinsically better – drives a lot of the conflict between him and Solaris, and felt scarily accurate to comments I got from family members about my own habits and social circles. 

What didn’t Work for Me:
Honestly not much. The chat-log structure bugged me for a bit, as they typically give both a group and character name for each piece of in-game dialogue (such as [raid][Solaris]dialogue). I thought that Hall could have made it clear from the more traditional paragraphs where this chat was happening and just used names. It felt clunky. I can’t imagine this is going to be a pleasant audiobook experience if they read every [Raid] tag out loud for each of what must be the thousand times its used in this book. It looks like they went the full-cast route though, so maybe they made some changes to address this concern? Not sure.

These concerns were tipped on their head when Solaris and Drew were having a very private fight in DMs while trying to put on a happy face to the wider group chat. It was such a creative way to use the game-chat function, and it was an incredibly tense and anxious moment that I desperately wanted to skip because of how uncomfortable (in a good way) I was reading it.

Finally, the ending did shift a bit more into traditional romance-trope territory. I give it a pass, but there is a part of me that wishes Hall would have really committed to something a bit messier. That said, this is the romance genre, so happy endings are the name of the game.

Conclusion: a brutally realistic and emotional nerd romance that featured relatable characters and tangible conflicts. Beautifully written, but not for those who don’t want a mountain of video game descriptions.

• Characters: 5
• Setting: 3
• Craft: 4
• Themes: 4
• Enjoyment:5