Gaming for Keeps (Entangled Ignite) on June 10th 2013 Pages: 112
Format: eARC
Goodreads
Gaming for Keeps by Seleste deLaneyPen Holloway's done with men-in real life. Guys in game are so much less drama. But when her partner from Heroes of Fallen Gods invites her to the convention of the year, she panics. What if he's another jerk? What if he's not?Cal Burrows is living his dream of being a spy. One of TRAIT's misfit spies, but still a spy. It's the perfect job... until an arms dealer with a taste for blood invades his not-so-secret geek haven. All Cal wanted from ConDamned was to meet his on-line girl. Now, with the threat of mass murder looming, he's forced to choose between keeping his mission a secret and protecting the girl of his dreams.Despite their attraction, Pen can't help but suspect Cal's hiding something. She also can't shake the feeling he's not as much of a stranger as he seems.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
This one caught my eye because I love video games, even if I never have time to play them much anymore. So of course I wanted to check this one out! At only 112 pages, it’s really a one sitting read and I really enjoyed it!
Pen is a fun MC who plays a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game for you non-gamers) and becomes friends with one of the guys she fights with in the game. He invites her to go to a game convention and on a whim, she decides to go. She’s been hurt in the past by some jerk ex and is a little jaded but Lohonas (the guy’s gamer name) seems so awesome that she takes the chance. Lohonas’ real name is Cal and he’s actually a spy. And there’s some serious crap about to go down at the game convention that he invited her to before knowing what was going to happen. Dun dun dun.
First of all, I loved Lohonas. He’s geeky but hot, he’s such a genuinely nice person, funny, fiercely protective and has all kinds of adorable geeky tendencies. He loves Firefly!! I mean, that right there — how can you go wrong? =) He’s super smart and a programming whiz — using his skills for the government. Which brings me to the spy bit in the plot. It was interesting, but it felt a little odd sometimes, like we just didn’t have enough time to go in depth with it enough. It just all seemed so… unbelievable. I mean, if something so huge was going down… why is there only like two people involved in stopping it? There were other random little nitpicky things, too. But, if you suspend your belief, it can work.
Pen is great. Despite the terrible ex, she can stand her own and I had a lot of respect for her! She’s fun and just a little snarky. I thought it was so cute that they find each other and click in real life just as they do online.
Personally, I really liked the settings and all the references to geeky things (lots of gaming references, Firefly, Star Wars, even a small Supernatural reference!) It made me want to play video games!
All in all, I liked the setting, characters and overall geekiness enough that I could SOMEWHAT ignore the unbelievable spy plot points. It’s a quick, entertaining read for sure. I’m giving it 3 stars but if I did half stars… it’d be more a 3.5. =)
Okay at first I was going to say you had me with the whole gamer angel. But then I see the word Firefly and I’m done I gotta read this book just because now!
This sounds really sweet! That cover cracks me up tho, it looks like some dodgy stalker book lol, will defo check this out!