Role Playing (25 in 2025 #17)

Author: Cathy Yardley Title: Role Playing Publisher: Montlake Date Published: 07/01/2023

Read Dates: 08/13/2025- 08/14/2025
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Role Playing is a dual POV friends-to-lovers romance. Maggie is 48 and practically a hermit, attempting to make friends by joining an online gaming guild started at the local community college. Through the game she meets Aiden, a 50 year old man who moved to their tiny town as a caretaker to his aging parents. Maggie assumes that “Otter” is a college kid, and Aiden assumes that “Bogwitch” is a cranky octogenarian! They quickly become friends in the game and when they meet in person they’re able to clear up misunderstandings and find their footing!

I really loved this book. I liked that the characters were closer to my age. I really identified with grumpy, antisocial Maggie, who is just done giving a fuck and peopling! And I really appreciated the demisexual representation in Aiden, I thought it was thoughtfully and accurately done.

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?