An accidental meeting and a misunderstanding lead to a life-altering connection.
A new job, a new city, and hopefully a new life. When chubby gamer Oliver Barnaby receives a job offer from the best boutique game developer in the country, he leaves his family and his less than spectacular existence in Oklahoma without a second’s hesitation. Determined to change more than his career and his geography, Oliver implements a plan to finally land a boyfriend. Step one is improving his skills in the bedroom.
A life that looks perfect on paper, but feels empty in reality. Attractive, successful, charismatic Jaime Snow has a life other people envy. His already booming business is growing. He isn’t lacking in friends. And he has no trouble finding a date. But there’s an emptiness in Jaime’s heart and a hole in his life that only the right man can fill.
An accidental meeting, a misunderstanding, and falling in love. When Oliver and Jaime end up at the same bar at the same time, they each see something they want in the other. Going to bed together that first night is easy. Building the lifetime relationship they both desperately crave will require trust, time, and a little misunderstanding.
Word count: 55,872
Chapter 1
He had chosen the bar because of its name: The Bookstore. It was clever and unusual and he had laughed internally at how happy his mother would be if he told her he was spending time at the Bookstore instead of in front of his computer. Oliver’s entire life, she had mourned the fact he wasn’t a reader, and even though he had now moved two thousand miles away from their home in Oklahoma City, she still sent him books she was sure he’d love. Maybe someday he’d open one of them.
For now, he glanced down at the only book he had read countless times and adjusted it at the edge of his table to make the spine as visible as possible. The title—Coding—wasn’t as clever as the bar name, but the information and the way it was phrased had clicked perfectly in Oliver’s…
It is always a joy to read a Cardeno C book. They are always a little bit of light in what can be a dark world at times.
Ahhh, I really liked this one. This is a very sweet book. Cute and cuddly through and through. This is also a classic Cardeno C contemporary. When CC nails a contemporary romance you get highly likeable characters and a truly delightful story. That’s this book. That’s Oliver and Jaime. They are perfect for one another, their love addictive, infectious, and squoogey.
Jay: Sometimes a cute, sweet, and low-drama story with an unlikely pairing is the perfect way to spend the day. That’s exactly the sort of book Cardeno C.’s Not a Game is. Kim: The author has an engaging writing style that pulled me right in and made me fall in love with these characters. Oliver was a unique hero, and I could not help but feel for him....This book made me smile often and believe in the saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
I enjoyed Not a Game and highly recommend it. With its distinctly different characters, strong scenes of physical and emotional connection, and sweet HEA, it is a lovely m/m romance with excellent promise for a new series.