ARC Review: Love Across the Tabletop by Kait Disney-Leugers

Hey all, Sam here.

Well all right then, I’m slowly working myself out of that post-Gen Con recovery time. It didn’t help that I basically immediately went back to my full-time job with no extra day to just relax, but that’s okay.

Even with the need for a few days of laziness to recover from the convention experience, I still love going to Gen Con. It’s so nice to just spend time with other people who love storytelling and gaming. I mean, come on, I met my husband because of Dungeons & Dragons, because of telling a collaborative story together while playing a game. It’s just really cool.

It’s also why I love continually picking up stories that are about people meeting and falling in love while playing TTRPGs. I know I just reviewed a book like this last week (and have actually reviewed 3 or 4 similar stories this calendar year), but I have another review ready for you all…and this one is an ARC review for a book I received from author Kait Disney-Leugers. So I will state here because it’s relevant that getting an early digital copy of this book did not affect my rating or review of this book. I liked the sound of the book and wanted to read it ASAP, so requesting an ARC enabled that, but if I had had to wait for release day, I would have still picked this up and read it.

Oh, also, Love Across the Tabletop is expected to be released November 5, 2024. And yes, I am getting myself a copy.

Will love be a critical success or an untimely end to the campaign?

Mika Levenberg is over relationships. After her ex-girlfriend cheats on her, all Mika wants to do is make good food and play the tabletop role-playing game Bargains & Battles with her friends every week.

Ash Aguila is new to Washington DC. After escaping an abusive relationship, he’s looking to start over in the Capitol and try to rebuild himself. When his cousin invites him to play a game called Battles & Bargains, Ash reluctantly agrees to try something new. At least he can meet some new people.

When he meets Mika, he discovers that passion can spark across the tabletop. Will Mika and Ash take a chance and roll the dice on love?

My Thoughts

Rating: 4.5 stars

One of my things about these contemporary romance TTRPG stories is that you get these little glimpses into the magic that happens around a table with the right group of people. I love found family type stories, and you could tell how much Mika’s friends cared about her. It was great. I loved that when they met up for game days, they usually had a meal together first, and after some games they would hang out and watch movies or whatever. I do admit that I have a habit of cooking for my own D&D group for before/during session eating, so it felt super relatable to me.

But with the found family aspect, you also had this extra layer because when Ash was added to the group, he is family by blood (cousin, if I remember correctly) to the game master.

And you know with a traditional romance arc that there’s going to be a third act complication with the couple that breaks them up for a bit….and you get to see a bit of how that affects the whole gaming group, because they are all such a tight-knit group/family.

I liked that there was mental health and therapy representation within the story, particularly with both Mika and Ash, and for the most part it felt like they handled the small bumps in their relationship maturely and responsibly thanks to skills learned through therapy. So when the abusive past relationship of Ash comes roaring back into the picture, while I can understand his response/reaction to some extent, it also felt a bit counter to what had been built between Mika and Ash through the whole book, so not only was there a third-act breakup (which is a theme/trope that I don’t like anyway), but it was basically a backslide of Ash’s character development.

But also, Ash’s ex was a whole nightmare mess of a person, and I can completely understand sliding right back into the survival trauma response of just going along with things to try and minimize repercussions.

Overall, I read this really quickly, and I enjoyed it. I would also kind of like more stories focused around this group, because I want to know more about all the members of this gaming group. So, who knows, maybe Kait Disney-Leugers will give us more in this world in future.

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All right, 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.