The No Girlfriend Rule

Hollis Beckwith is plus-size, seventeen and a gifted artist.  She and her boyfriend, Chris, have been together since sixth grade. He loves to play a role-playing dice game called Secrets and Sorcery. One of his other best friends, Landon, is extremely misogynistic in that he has decreed that there should be no girlfriends involved in their game. Hollis, desperately wanting to stay close to Chris, needs to find her own team to play with and demonstrate that she can understand something he loves so much.

Hollis finds an all-girl group but what does the game and the act of playing it and the friendships formed through it have in store for both Hollis and Chris?

Initially, the author lets the uninitiated reader into quite a closed world of a game based on Dungeons and Dragons which is surprisingly complicated. This reviewer really enjoyed the interplay between the fictional characters who are inhabited during the game and the normal lives of the characters in the novel. Author Randall plays really well with the line between fiction and reality.

There is an authentic representation of the experience of anxiety disorder in this book which some readers may find comforting. The novel will also be affirming to those who are questioning their sexuality.