NetGalley Review: Who We Are in Real Life by Victoria Koops

Hey all, Sam here.

I have been missing the fun of collaborative storytelling with dice around a table. For the entirety of our relationship, David and I have been avid tabletop rpg’ers, both in the game master seat and as players. So naturally I have been loving that we are getting more books where the characters play TTRPGs, and I am picking up as many of them as I can. While it doesn’t completely fill my desire to be at a table engaging in a campaign, reading these types of books helps soothe the ache a bit.

Today’s book review is once again for a book I read in January, and I completely intended to have the review up in time for the book’s release at the beginning of February. I admit that I have been struggling to get into a rhythm with my blogging this year, and I am still working on it. Hopefully I can get into some sort of regular posting schedule.

All right, let’s go ahead and get into the review.

Fans of Rainbow Rowell and Casey McQuiston will fall for this story of tabletop gaming, romance and epic campaigns ― both in game and IRL. IRL, Darcy has just moved to the small prairie town of Unity Creek with her two moms. It feels like she left everything good behind in the city. She misses her tabletop gaming friends and her boyfriend ― and is horrified by the homophobia her family faces in their new home. Then she meets kind, quiet Art, who invites her to join his Dungeons & Dragons game. Art is mostly happy fading into the background at school and only really coming alive during his friends’ weekly D&D game ― until meeting Darcy pulls his life off-course in wonderful and alarming ways. Suddenly he has something worth fighting for. But what if that something puts him in conflict with his father, an influential and conservative figure in their town? Can Art stand up against his father’s efforts to prevent Darcy and her friends from starting a queer-straight alliance at school? Meanwhile, in game, Darcy’s and Art’s D&D characters join forces to fight corruption as they grow closer in the homebrew world of Durgeon’s Keep ― as fantasy and reality collide.

My Thoughts

Rating: 3.5 stars

I wanted to LOVE this book, but overall I simply like it. This was a decent YA story that bounces between in game and out of game storylines and both have similar story beats and arcs. And I read this in only a couple hours so it definitely was a nice quick read.

I liked the D&D group and their adventure, and I enjoyed getting a glimpse into Darcy’s geek past and her connections with her old gaming store.

What greatly lessened my enjoyment of this story was the queer struggle and hate present in this book. Yes, I know that those of us with a queer identity often face these encounters and issues and struggles. I guess I just wanted this story to be focused on more than just that struggle. Because it felt like 85% of this book was bullying and homophobia and hate, and it took until the very end for a few people to stand up and ally against that treatment. So instead of feeling like a moment of triumph to me, it just felt like a lessening of the burden that was the rest of the book.

So I will say that my rating isn’t because the book wasn’t written well, because it was. And the characters felt real, and their experiences felt real. It was a good book. My rating is purely because of how I personally felt while reading it, and that was that I wasn’t enjoying the feeling. There’s enough discrimination and hatred in the world as it is. And perhaps it is unrealistic to want less of it in my fiction, but I enjoy it so much more when we have stories that celebrate and accept the diversity we would wish to have in the world.

Again, I will say that this book was a good one. Like I said, it only took me a couple hours to read it, so it was captivating enough to keep me reading it. I enjoyed the division of following the in-game adventures and seeing how there were certain parallels to the out-of-game plot. And in the end, the group of friends banding together to stand up against the homophobia of certain leaders in the community was nice.

This is a book I would still recommend, and it is a book I will keep on my shelves, but it won’t be one I recommend as often as I would some of the other TTRPG novels I have read in recent months.

---

Well, that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.