Looking for Group by Alexis Hall

   This is sort of my story. About how I messed up some stuff and figured out some stuff. And fell in love and stuff. 

(Drew. Looking for Group, Alexis Hall)

Looking for Group, by Alexis Hall, is the story of two teenage boys that fall in love playing a computer game that closely resembles World of Warcraft. Having been heavily nerd-adjacent my whole life - all of my friends in high school being of the nerdiest variety - this book felt in a weird way like coming home. 

I too have fallen in love in the virtual world of a video game, so reading about Kit and Drew becoming friends inside their guild and then realizing there was more there than friendship felt natural and very contemporary. Looking for Group is written by a self-proclaimed nerd boy, and it is definitely very much for other nerdy humans. The writing is as witty, funny, and emotional as you would expect from Alexis Hall, with the added bonus of a lot of gamer speak. For those who have never touched a video game or any kind of mass multiplayer online game and have no idea what is going on in the novel, there is a glossary in the back. However, I do think this novel speaks to a very specific set of humans, and if you're not into video games or general nerd culture, this just might not be the book for you. 

For all us kids that grew up making friends on the internet, and even sometimes finding love, I highly recommend this book. It touches on a to of ideas that older generations have thrown at us like how we don't know how to socialize because we spend too much time online, or how a life on the internet is somehow less real than real life, and of course challenges the stigma of falling in love through virtual methods.  The story of Kit and Drew feels real and relevant and so beautifully written. And to everyone nerdy or nerd-adjacent, like me, you'll find you friends among the characters, your world among the pages, and you'll most likely lose The Game. (Sorry, not sorry.)

-Zoë

As someone who has rarely played video games, and never played an online multiplayer game, I didn't relate to this book at all in the gamer essence of it. However, Alexis Hall has such a way with the style that he writes characters, that even if you can't relate to the plot, you can relate to the characters. I read Looking for Group on Kindle and didn't know about the glossary of terms, so it took me about half an hour to read the first chapter because I had to keep googling different gaming terms.(Ha!) Once I got a basic grasp on the gaming terms, the rest of the story fell in line so well. Online games aside, the gist of Looking for Group is that you can find your friends, your family, and even your love, in unconventional ways. Found family, found love--those things are so relatable regardless of your gaming experience. It's probably not a book that I would read again, but I can appreciate the community and relationships that Alexis Hall was able to create in a book that's surprisingly different from the rest of his works. It's his only truly YA book, and it's a beautiful story of found friends and first love. 

-Kai

Z: ★★★★★

K: ★★★