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 boyfriend: 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.
Enter: 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.
Remember how I’m exhausted of queer novels always being YA and cannot relate to any of it?
Well.
The No-Girlfriend Rule is a young adult (high school) novel about a girl who realizes she might not be super straight while playing a tabletop RPG with a group of feminists, only one of them blue-haired.
I’m vibing already.
Our protagonist is also fat and suffers from anxiety. Her boyfriend is « okay, but » tier and not an absolute asshole, just a teenage boy with shortcomings − including being unable to cope with panic attacks, which is a problem. The RPG campaign itself is very fun to follow, and there’s a painfully relatable middle schooler with ADHD who brings sunshine to the entire story.
Everyone is lovable and sweet, and the novel was, actually, really relatable. A nice breath of fresh air and bisexuality before going back to *check notes* genocide stories.
👍
Azaliz