Hollis Beckwith is just trying to get through senior year. Fat, broke, and riddled with anxiety, she’s got enough on her plate. At least she has her boyfriend Chris to help her get by. Their relationship is nothing to write home about, but it’s comfortable and familiar and Hollis wants their relationship to survive even after school is over. To prove she’s worth keeping, she decides to learn his favourite tabletop roleplaying game Secrets & Sorcery. Forbidden to join her boyfriends’ game since “there are no girls allowed,” Hollis decides to find her own group to play with. Enter Gloria and her all-girls game crew! Together with five other girls, Hollis and her fictional character venture on a campaign that’s going to change lives—maybe even their real ones.
When an in-game crush develops between Hollis’ and Aini’s—the charismatic and gorgeous girl Hollis can’t really take her eyes off—characters, fake feelings spark into real ones as Hollis finds herself wondering whether she actually knows what she wants in life or has let someone else play her all along.
Oh, you just know this is going to be an absolute hit with anyone who’s ever played a roleplaying game or was told by guys that they can’t enjoy them because it’s only for boys. And to that I say, girls rule the world, get with the times, please.
Beyond intricate play-by-play game arcs, you also have wonderfully unique characters in The No-Girlfriend Rule.
Admittedly, Hollis frustrated me quite a lot in the beginning because she’s clearly in a toxic relationship where she isn’t valued or cherished at all and every time she does something good for herself and Chris reprimands her, she ends up taking his side and accepting the bounds of their relationship. It was hard to read (mostly because I think we’ve all been in one of those relationships where all our friends told us to leave and we just said ‘no this is fine’ while it decidedly was not) because it felt so relatable and you just wanted Hollis to have more in life than what she got.
That being said, though, I completely understand the choice to make her character stick to familiarity and trying not to rock the boat because she’s scared to find out who she would be outside of the relationship she has had so far. It makes for an incredible growth arc as she finds herself and comes to understand that her boyfriend is a piece of trash.
And talking about that piece of trash. Rarely have I wanted to slap a character this much. Chris got my blood boiling (and made me want to text my ex just to scream at him but that’s beside the point) with how granted he took Hollis and never stood up to her and was generally a walking red flag in every single situation. In one scene they’re driving in a car and Chris’s best friend Landon (who deserves to be strung up and tortured like back in the mediaeval times) were so incredibly rude to Hollis that I wanted to throw them out the moving vehicle and leave them in the dust.
So I’ll note this down as excellent storytelling because the portrayal of these two boys made me feel all the emotions but also be warned that this depiction might make you want to throw your book out the window and set fire to the world (in a chill way, obviously).
Moving on to happier things, the game group Hollis encounters was absolute bliss. Now, while my eyes sometimes glossed over reading the game play-by-play, I know that fans of tabletop games (or literally anyone who has a longer attention span than I do) will love how the game’s characters are interwoven seamlessly into the story and how Hollis gets to know her new friends through their characters and their quest. From Fran and Maggie who bring all the joy to Gloria who created a masterful campaign and Iffy who is the ride-or-die friend of the group you need on your side, everyone added so much to the friend group. And Aini was of course the cherry on top. Playful, charismatic, and caring, she has her heart at the right place.
Throughout their friendship and the eventual will-they-won’t-they vibes you could tell that this girl is one of a kind, not to mention the way she supported Hollis throughout her sexual identity crisis. There’s also a scene in which Hollis’ anxiety get really bad during a game session and the way everyone immediately did all they could to make her feel comfortable and not caged was incredible. And the aftermath was even more cathartic, I’m very glad Randall decided to include not just the panic attack but the way everyone dealt with it afterward, with no judgement. It’s a very healing scene.
Speaking of, the way anxiety was represented in this book was genius. It starts with small things like Hollis editing all her messages in the discord group chat (been there) because she’s hesitant to say the wrong thing and really shows just how diverse anxiety can be experienced.
All in all, this book proved to be a promising debut.
A sweet, soft story about finding yourself and the joy of finding friends that just get you, The No-Girlfriend Rule is for everyone who ever felt more comfortable playing a character in life than being the main one.
The No-Girlfriend Rule is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of March 5th 2024.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Julie Murphy meets Casey McQuiston in this unforgettable queer romance about a teen girl whose foray into fantasy tabletop roleplaying brings her new confidence, true friends, and a shot at real, swoon-worthy love.
Hollis Beckwith isn’t trying to get a girl—she’s just trying to get by. For a fat, broke girl with anxiety, the start of senior year brings enough to worry about. And besides, she already has a Chris. Their relationship isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s comfortable and familiar, and Hollis wants it to survive beyond senior year. To prove she’s a girlfriend worth keeping, Hollis decides to learn Chris’s favorite tabletop roleplaying game, Secrets & Sorcery—but his unfortunate “No Girlfriends at the Table” rule means she’ll need to find her own group if she wants in.
Gloria Castañeda and her all-girls game of S&S! Crowded at the table in Gloria’s cozy Ohio apartment, the six girls battle twisted magic in-game and become fast friends outside it. With her character as armor, Hollis starts to believe that maybe she can be more than just fat, anxious, and a little lost.
But then an in-game crush develops between Hollis’s character and the bard played by charismatic Aini Amin-Shaw, whose wide, cocky grin makes Hollis’s stomach flutter. As their gentle flirting sparks into something deeper, Hollis is no longer sure what she wants…or if she’s content to just play pretend.
