e-Audio, 12:08:01
Narrated by: Alexandra Palting & Kevin R. Free
Release Date: May 28, 2024
Published by: Macmillan Audio
Read from: May 30-31, 2024
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley (I received a copy of this e-audio from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
Content Warning: Misogyny, Sexism, Gaslighting, Sports Injury/Injury detail, Sexual harassment, Racism, Homophobia, Abandonment, Sexual assault
For Readers Interested In: Classic Retellings, Racial Ethnic Diversity, YA, Celebrity Book Clubs, Romance, GamingReese’s Book Club Summer YA Pick ’24
“YA is a feeling. It’s a warm summer day reading in the sun, lots of nostalgia, gushing together over the characters in Twelfth Knight.”—Reese Witherspoon
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six (under the penname Olivie Blake) comes Twelfth Knight, a YA romantic comedy and coming of age story about taking up space in the world and learning what it means to let others in.
Viola Reyes is annoyed.
Her painstakingly crafted tabletop game campaign was shot down, her best friend is suggesting she try being more “likable,” and her school’s star running back Jack Orsino is the most lackadaisical Student Body President she’s ever seen, which makes her job as VP that much harder. Vi’s favorite escape from the world is the MMORPG Twelfth Knight, but online spaces aren’t exactly kind to girls like her—girls who are extremely competent and have the swagger to prove it. So Vi creates a masculine alter ego, choosing to play as a knight named Cesario to create a safe haven for herself.
But when a football injury leads Jack Orsino to the world of Twelfth Knight, Vi is alarmed to discover their online alter egos—Cesario and Duke Orsino—are surprisingly well-matched.
As the long nights of game-play turn into discussions about life and love, Vi and Jack soon realise they’ve become more than just weapon-wielding characters in an online game. But Vi has been concealing her true identity from Jack, and Jack might just be falling for her offline…
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
*MY THOUGHTS*
I know that so many people will love this, but that just wasn’t the case for me. There was so much left unsaid in this book that it felt undone. BUT the secret identity and the gaming thing kept me hooked to this. It was fun, until it wasn’t.
Ok so the main thing I didn’t care for about this was the way the main character was half Filipino but I didn’t know until the end of the story. And the love interest was Black (?) judging from the cover, and there’s more characters in the story that are so ambiguous. It’s weird. It was like I knew they were a person of color but nothing made them different than the others. And the characters who did have discerning characteristics from others, that was all they had. She doesn’t tell how those things are resolved or anything. Just that they are there or happening within her family and I found that annoying. Because if you’re going to mention it and then leave it as a passing glance, WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF MENTIONING IT?! And like those things aren’t small? There was absolutely no character development and as a character driven reader, I was a bit bored.
I’m usually not a fan of the secret identity trope, but IDK, it HITS DIFFERENT in YA. lol I always end up enjoying them more when they’re in YA. And bonus points if its on a game or a social media. It always turns up with some weird ass drama and I am a sucker for some drama lol But in this one it was a little hurtful? Like she was only doing it because of the way people treated her as a fan of this game. It was painfully familiar as a female sports fan and I hated it for her.
Another way this felt unresolved was all the misogyny that was happening and then that was it. When she finally told the love interest who she was, he said basically yeah this is happening and then was like you did this to me why? I know that this would be a real YA boy’s reaction, but I think it should have had someone there to tell him, yo that’s not ok. Something to show that he learned something throughout this entire book.
This was cute and it had it’s moments where I was like ok, this makes sense. But at the same time, I was very much weirded out that stuff just kept popping up but nothing was solved. It seemed like one big open-ended story. And it was really weird.
Overall, I give this
