Play It Again

Play It Again (2019) Aidan Wayne

Dovid and his sister Rachel are YouTube stars. They actually make their living from it, first becoming famous after Rachel recorded Dovid ranting about how he hated it when people didn’t pronounce his name correctly. But he also spends time going to schools and talking abut bullying because that’s something Dovid understands.

Dovid had been a pretty typical child. Just that, thanks to medulloepithelioma— a type of incredibly invasive cancer— he grew up missing two parts a typical child possessed, after they were removed in order to get rid of the cancer entirely.

So Dovid does restaurant reviews focusing not just on the food, but also on accessibility–how hard is it to move through a restaurant? Are braille menus available? How do the staff react to him?

Sam lives in Ireland, and has a small YouTube channel where he does game walk throughs. He does it for fun and because it’s a form of socialization he can handle.

(W)ith his job being IT, there were often good reasons he came home having exhausted his social-skill quota for the day and was only up to playing some games or reading a book before crashing. Books and video games also didn’t yell at you, or snidely act as though you were a waste of space.

When Rachel discovers Sam’s channel, and then introduces Dovid to it, be binge listens to the whole thing and then talks about it on his own channel, unexpectedly sending a whole lot more viewers Sam’s way. After Dovid reaches out to apologize for overwhelming Sam, the two start talking, and the more they talk, the more feelings that develop.

They were using an awful lot of emoticons with each other. Were they flirting? Was this flirting? If this were anyone else Dovid would totally consider it flirting. But he really liked Sam, and Sam was just so nice. Maybe Dovid was just projecting. He didn’t want to say or do anything wrong by accident.

It’s adorable.

And there are actually two ace characters: Rachel, and Sam, so there is no boinking, just cuddling and adorableness.

That’s not to say that everything is easy. Sam’s really doesn’t love his job, and as we discover why, we learn where his deference comes from–and how Dovid tries to help him overcome some of it.

Did I mention how sweet this story is? It’s really sweet.

Publisher: Carina Press
Rating: 9/10

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