DON'T HATE THE PLAYER

How long can Emilia Romero keep up her charade?

At Hillford West, her Pennsylvania high school, Emilia is a savvy junior set on living up to her hardworking Puerto Rican parents’ high expectations. At night, she is a heavyweight gamer losing sleep doing what she actually wants to do: kicking serious offensive butt in Guardians League Online, a team-based, multiplayer shooting game. When the chance at winning glory—and $200,000—in an amateur GLO tournament to be held in a new esports stadium proves too tempting, Emilia risks revealing her true identity in order to play with the notoriously ruthless Team Fury. Meanwhile, Jake Hooper is a sensitive, emotionally aware White gamer who bonded with Emilia over an arcade game during a fourth grade birthday party and has never forgotten her. When their paths cross again at the GLO tournament, where Jake is also a competitor, their seemingly opposite lives become deeply intertwined. In this delightfully entertaining romance, Nedd covers an impressive range of topics with a rare combination of hilarity, sarcasm, and sincerity: toxic masculinity, doxxing, gaming culture wars, the pressure cooker of Latinx parenting, and, yes, love. Gamers and nongamers alike will squeal, cheer, and boo in this page-turner in which the high-stakes action within the tournament mixes perfectly with the vulnerable blossoming of Emilia and Jake’s relationship.

A sure winner.