The biggest draw of this storyline for me has to be the fact that I am almost close to the age bracket being discussed here. Our lead protagonist is Sierra Ried, who has graduated from an undergraduate degree a decade ago and is about to plunge right back into the past.
I also graduated ten years ago, and I know the exact feeling of embarrassment of certain events that are indelibly etched into my mind. The piece of luck I had versus Sierra is that I am pretty much one of the only people who remember the stuff that happened then, so I am safe in the knowledge that I am safe as well as the fact that my tiny little embarrassments are nothing in comparison to what she went through.
Our leading lady and her best friend work in a male-dominated field and to get over their current hurdle, Sierra needs to get over her anxiety of public speaking (the trigger was not as dramatic as I expected it to be, but by then I was invested). To do just that, she is going to participate in a challenge which involves speaking about and being voted on the most embarrassing parts of their lives. There are a few explicit scenes in the end which I pretty much skipped. The rest of the book focuses on the growth of a reasonably happy woman into a much happier one. Knowledge of video games and their lingo might help it taking away more from the story than I did because of all the references and play on words.
It is well written and snappy with mostly vivid characters which is just the right combination for me at this time. The twist I saw coming quite early on and was a little annoyed with everyone involved because of the way they were acting. Despite all that, I would recommend it to anyone on the lookout for a quick read. I would not recommend it to anyone who is not into very descriptive romantic scenes however, since, towards the end, we are given a lot of detail.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 