Review: Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert

ARC provided by the publisher. All opinions my own.

Conventionally Yours is an incredibly fun road-trip romance. It follows Conrad and Alden as they make their way to a fan convention for a card game at which they both excel. Conrad's life is falling apart in every realm except the game, Odyssey. He is on the brink of homelessness and is unable to continue his education and is relying on prize money from the competition at the convention to turn his life around. Alden is counting on winning to give his life direction and get the scrutiny of his mom's off him as his life has not taken the path they all had planned for him.

I had so much fun reading this book. I was literally awake until 5 am reading it; clearly, I had a good time. The romance is cute, and the road trip moves the story along quite well, the tension between the characters is well done, both romantic and related to the competition they are about to play each other in.

I can't think of many non-fantasy road trip books I have enjoyed, but this one was pretty great. I particularly think it was great to read during isolation as it takes you on a cross country road trip with tons of fun stops and a decent amount of being allowed to touch other humans.

I did bump against the speed at which the romance went from like to love, thought the rest of the pacing was well done, but that jump seemed jarring even though it was well telegraphed to the reader. It was just hard to believe that a character who keeps himself emotionally separate from other people as a defense would be this quick to say I love you. The other issue I had with the book was that the ultimate culmination of the plot seemed very very convenient. I love a happy ending, and I wanted a happy ending, but this would have been more believable if the book had had mentions of the ultimate outcome being an option earlier on in the book. My vagueness is in an attempt to not spoil beyond "this romance novel ends happily," which itsn't a massive spoiler because it is somewhat expected in the genre.

I liked the nerdy fun aspects of the book. I have never been this kind of nerd, I assume Odyssey is kind of like Magic the Gathering, but I don't know enough about it to be sure, but I loved reading about the excitement the characters had for the game.

The characters were an excellent group of mostly LGBTQ+ people. I liked the inclusion of a nonbinary person in the book and do kind of wish that they had more page time. Obviously, a two-person road-trip taking up most of the book doesn't leave tons of page time for the other characters. But this seems to be a series so maybe I will be seeing these people again! I also really appreciated Alden's character, I related to the social anxiety plus being embarrassingly literal at times, I loved reading about the way he interacted with the group and seeing them come to understand him better.

This was a fun enemies to lovers jaunt across the US full of nerdiness and the pressure of making life decisions (I am currently doing this bit so I related hard). I had a good time reading and will certainly rad more of the series.

I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads and the book is out on June 2, 2020.