 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today I want to share with you my review of To Can Play That Game by Leanne Young. This book was sent to me by Allen and Unwind for review. It is a young adult Australian title, which I am so excited to be able to share with you. I'm going to kick this off by reading you the blurb of the back of the book because I think it summarizes far better than I can. So this is about Sam Koo who has one goal in life, create cool indie games. She's willing to do anything to make her dream come true, even throw away a scholarship to university. All she needs is a super rare ticket to a game design workshop and she can kickstart her career. So when Jay aka Jerky McJerkface sneakily grabs the last ticket it's war. Knowing how their Australian Malaysian community works, Sam issues him an ultimatum. Put the ticket on the line in a one-on-one competition of classic video games or she'll broadcast his duplicity to everyone. Thank you Asian Gossip Network. Meeting in neutral locations away from the eyes and ears of nosy aunties and uncles, Sam and Jay connect despite themselves. It's a puzzle that Sam's not sure she wants to solve, but when her dream is under threat will she discover that there is more than one way to win? This was so fun and I can see why this has been blurbed by YChim, Michelle Law, Kate Kerr, CS Picat because it is just a very cleverly written story and while it is YA both these characters are out of high school. Sam is about to start university, Jay I think is currently in university so they're just that little bit older and it has a real rivals to lovers vibe in here. The thing that I loved about this book is I loved how passionate Sam is about creating indie games. It's been her dream for the longest time and she is working so hard to pursue it and she's given up a lot to do that. There is a wonderful side plot in here as well with her and her best friend who goes on to be quite successful in creating an indie game that becomes very highly sought after and it gives this story a really lovely success versus failure plotline that I think is really necessary because sometimes when you have a dream doesn't always necessarily mean that that dream is successful in its first iteration and that failure is only a starting point and I don't think we get enough of that explicitly discussed in books. I think it's featured in a lot of books but there is a lot of pressure placed on people to succeed the first time and that doesn't always happen. That's not reality and I love that that's a plotline within this story because of course picking yourself up again after a failure is really really important and it's a skill that people need to learn. I love that this kind of explores first love in a really lovely way and that you have a demisexual protagonist. It's also important to see that representation in books. It is of course the perfect book for people who love games. There are so many game references in here and all of the five games that Jay and Sam play in the story as part of their competition are games that mirror real life games. Now I personally am not a gamer so I can't comment on how accurate they are however I know that Lee-Ann Yong is very very proficient in all of these so I trust that what we see on the page is fairly accurate and it was really nice for me as a non-gamer to read those because I'd quite honestly do not know anything about video games so it was a really nice learning experience for me as a reader. The Malaysian Australian rep in here was fantastic. I loved seeing the family dynamics and how Sam and Jay as navigate the family politics of that as well. It was really funny and I also really love Jay's younger brother in the story who is autistic so you have great neurodiverse representation in here and the whole thing was honestly a delight. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a copy of this. I was very very excited to receive it and to read it. I will leave all of the links to where you can find this book down below in the description. If you have read this book or if you're planning on picking it up I would love to hear about it in the comments or if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't leave a comment feel free to leave a game controller down below. I hope that wherever you're on the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.