Role Playing - by Cathy Yardley (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

From Cathy Yardley, author of Love, Comment, Subscribe, comes an emotional rom-com about two middle-aged gamers who grow their online connection into an IRL love story.

Maggie is an unapologetically grumpy forty-eight-year-old hermit. But when her college-aged son makes her a deal--he'll be more social if she does the same--she can't refuse. She joins a new online gaming guild led by a friendly healer named Otter. So that nobody gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch.

Otter is Aiden, a fifty-year-old optimist using the guild as an emotional outlet from his family drama caring for his aging mother while his brother plays house with Aiden's ex-fiancée.

Bogwitch and Otter become fast virtual friends, but there's a catch. Bogwitch thinks Otter is a college student. Otter assumes Bogwitch is an octogenarian.

When they finally meet face to face--after a rocky, shocking start--the unlikely pair of sunshine and stormy personalities grow tentatively closer. But Maggie's previous relationships have left her bitter, and Aiden's got a complicated past of his own.

Everything's easier online. Can they make it work in real life?

Review Quotes

A New York Times Best Romance of the Year

A Bookriot Best Book of 2023

Winner of American Library Association's RUSA 2024 Reading List Award for Romance

"Singular characters and genuine emotion make this a broadly appealing romance." --Kirkus Reviews

"This delightfully quirky romance...is a charming celebration of the many ways connections can develop." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Role Playing features one of the most endearing couples I've read in a long, long time. Aiden's kindness, warmth, and patience make him the sweetest cinnamon roll hero possible, while Maggie is the cranky, fiercely loyal heroine of my dreams. Yardley doesn't shy away from difficult family and friend dynamics, but that only makes the way Maggie and Aiden help and defend one another all the more satisfying. And the earrings-removal moment at the wedding reception? Absolute, gleeful perfection." --Olivia Dade, Nationally bestselling author of Spoiler Alert and Ship Wrecked

"Yardley does an excellent job writing realistic characters who still manage to be swoonworthy... Full of funny and heartfelt scenes with fierce yet kind protagonists." --Library Journal (starred review)

"Role Playing is a refreshing twist on the online (and unseen) gaming-friends-to-lovers tale, featuring a reclusive heroine with feral fighter energy who I want on my ride-or-die team and an eminently huggable gentle-giant healer with a heart of gold. Yardley is an absolute queen of character-driven plotting, and her skill shines brightly in this book laced with sharp humor and nuanced realism....It's a small-town romance for the anti-small-town romance reader that will charm even the grumpiest, most cynical bogwitch, and I dare you not to devour this book in a single sitting." --Jen Comfort, author of Midnight Duet

"Seriously funny and deliciously fresh, Role Playing takes all the very best parts of romance and mixes it into a wildly entertaining, heartwarmingly romantic, truly special book. I can't wait to see what Cathy Yardley writes next." --Suzanne Brockmann, New York Times Bestseller

"The biggest, coziest, sexiest hug of a Gen X romance. I loved it to pieces." --Erin Hahn, author of Built to Last