When your favorite player turns out to be your very real boss, the rules are a lot more complicated.
Elizabeth Gordon-Bettencourt is rebuilding her life on her own terms, starting with a new internship, a shot at her dream job as a civil engineer, and a whole lot of distance from her family’s drama. With her life full of change, the one constant is @theanswerisno, a charming gamer who seems to just . . . get her. Even if he has no interest in meeting her in real life.
Elizabeth would feel a lot more confident about her job if her new boss wasn’t so hard to read. Lincoln Carden is quiet, demanding, and adamant about avoiding small talk—especially in the office. What she doesn’t know is that online, he’s someone else entirely: quick, confident, and a little bit flirty. And his favorite player to team up with is @pancakesareelite, the one person who never makes him feel like he has to try so hard. As their two worlds start to collide, Elizabeth and Lincoln start to wonder: with their careers on the line and their online friendship at risk, is a romance IRL worth it?
Elizabeth Gordon-Bettencourt is rebuilding her life on her own terms, starting with a new internship, a shot at her dream job as a civil engineer, and a whole lot of distance from her family’s drama. With her life full of change, the one constant is @theanswerisno, a charming gamer who seems to just . . . get her. Even if he has no interest in meeting her in real life.
Elizabeth would feel a lot more confident about her job if her new boss wasn’t so hard to read. Lincoln Carden is quiet, demanding, and adamant about avoiding small talk—especially in the office. What she doesn’t know is that online, he’s someone else entirely: quick, confident, and a little bit flirty. And his favorite player to team up with is @pancakesareelite, the one person who never makes him feel like he has to try so hard. As their two worlds start to collide, Elizabeth and Lincoln start to wonder: with their careers on the line and their online friendship at risk, is a romance IRL worth it?
Title: Next Level Love
Author: Shameez Patel
Publisher: Forever
Expected Publication Date: January 20, 2026
Review:
Thank you to Forever Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this title to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
How cute is a romance about two online friends who flirt and interact and end up actually knowing each other in real life but not knowing it? I love the mystery there and how much fun things could be for these two. And, while this book had such a great concept it was just ok for me.
So much potential kind of wasted here. The characters were interesting enough. I liked the ADHD representation for the male main character, Lincoln. I could feel his anxiety and how hard it was for him to be social. He had a fair amount of depth, which I appreciated. But I also felt like I really didn't know him well. For the female main character, Elizabeth, I couldn't really find it in myself to care much about her. She's barely developed despite her having a background that could have truly leant to her growth and development. She has some trauma in her past and we're made aware of it, but the interactions she has as a result of it just don't jive for me. I needed her to have more anxiety, more fear. And it just wasn't there. Plus she lets people just step all over her and never tries to defend herself or stand up for herself in any way.
The side characters were fun. I did love how much Lincoln's friends supported him and tried to honor his ADHD and what it meant for their interactions with him.
The pacing is slow in this book and ended up taking away from the plot for me. I originally loved the text message exchanges between the characters. I really thought they would give lots of great insight into the characters and their relationship. But in the long run they really didn't lend much to the story. I needed the texts to really show their friendship and what kind of role it played in them forming the bond they had. But it just gave snippets here and there of their snarky, silly conversations. I also usually love women in STEM but this book just made her seem wishy washy as she was surrounded by men who thought it was ok to treat her as if she were below them and not as smart as them. Is this a theme I see in STEM, yes, because it's often a bone of contention. But the way it was done here didn't lend much to the story line and there was no true resolution of it. The author paints the FMC as less than throughout the book and I just don't understand why you would present a character in this way.
Overall, it was cute but just did not hit the mark for me. I ended up giving it 2.5 stars but have rounded to three for the purposes of this review.
Author:
Shameez Patel was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. She lives there with her husband, child, and three cats. During the day, she juggles her time between her daughter and working in STEM, but at night, she escapes to new worlds that often include magic and monsters and always have someone to fall in love with. Shameez fell in love with fiction, especially fantasy fiction, at a young age. Her parents fondly recall receiving her first handwritten story before the age of ten, titled The Treasures of Zombie Island, which surprisingly featured no zombies at all. She has been writing ever since.
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