Book Review: Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce

Title: Dungeons and Drama

Author: Kristy Boyce

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publishing Date: January 9th, 2024

Read: January 6th, 2025

Pages: 304

Audio Length: 7 Hours 55 Minutes

Genre: YA contemporary romance

TW: N/A

Series: Standalone

Source: Audio

What it's about:

When it comes to romance, sometimes it doesn't hurt to play games. A fun YA romcom full of fake dating hijinks!

Musical lover Riley has big aspirations to become a director on Broadway. Crucial to this plan is to bring back her high school’s spring musical, but when Riley takes her mom’s car without permission, she's grounded and stuck with the worst punishment: spending her after-school hours working at her dad’s game shop.

Riley can't waste her time working when she has a musical to save, so she convinces Nathan—a nerdy teen employee—to cover her shifts and, in exchange, she’ll flirt with him to make his gamer-girl crush jealous.

But Riley didn’t realize that meant joining Nathan's Dungeons & Dragons game…or that role playing would be so fun. Soon, Riley starts to think that flirting with Nathan doesn't require as much acting as she would've thought...

What I thought:

My first book of 2025!!! I'm SO glad I chose this one, I'm a sucker for anything with DnD or geekery and this was such a sweet and funny romance. I also love fake dating and enemies to lovers so hello. It was perfect for me.

Cover:

The cover is SO cute. As some of you might know my parents are HUGE board gamers, so I showed my mom the cover to see if she could name the board games on it, and I was even texting her the board games mentioned in the book.

Anyway! I really like the cover, it's super cute and bright. 

Story:

Enemies to lovers and fake dating are my favorite tropes, so good. 

I really liked this because while there was drama, there wasn't DRAMA. It wasn't annoying whiny teenage BS.

Pace: 

This book had a really good flow, I was into it from the beginning.

Writing: 

It was a well written book, I didn't feel like it was immature or too informative. It was just right.

Characters: 

Besides Sophie (Gag) and Ben (Double gag) I loved every character of this book. Is it weird to be over 30 and absolutely love Nathan? In my mind they weren't teens so I think this is fine. Anyway.

The romance even between the two main characters? Swoon worthy. The nerdy DnD friends? *chefs kiss*

Her hot geeky dad? Yes please. 

Ending: 

Such a cute ending, of course this kind of book is super predictable but you know? I don't mind.

Narrator:

Overall:

This book gave me a warm squishy feeling and that's exactly how I wanted to start my year out.

A little Snippet:

“I decided having something fake with you was better than having nothing at all. I would have faked it forever rather than give you up.”

― Kristy Boyce, Dungeons and Drama

Possible books of likeness:

YA:

Adult:

Author's info:

Kristy Boyce lives in Columbus, OH and teaches psychology as a senior lecturer at The Ohio State University.

When she’s not spending time with her husband and son, she’s usually writing, reading, putting together fairy gardens, or watching happy reality TV (The Great British Bake-Off and So You Think You Can Dance are perennial favorites).

Kristy is the social media coordinator for Central and Southern Ohio SCBWI.

Website https://www.kristyboyceauthor.com/

Twitter KristyLBoyce