Funny and really well done, this has hints of Stranger Things about it. The characters are great, and the stakes feel believable. Also Stinky and all his soups were extremely entertaining. Great for middle school readers looking for an adventure that blends fantasy and reality. ( )

What happens when a team of D&D style adventurers get trapped inside their favorite RPG game called Homerooms & Hall Passes where they each act out a character from a "typical" 7th Grade - can that Palladin really succeed as the over-achiever & is the teams wizard now the class nerd? This silly & fun story will enchant D&D fans as well as other readers. ( )

It's an adventurer's life for Apprentice Mage Albiorix and his four friends (a Paladin, a Thief, a Barbarian, and a Shadow Elf). They earn their living through completing various quests, but once a week, they gather in the back room of a local inn for some light entertainment: a game of Homerooms and Hall Passes. In this game, they take on various roles (the Nerd, the Loner, the Class Clown) and complete various nonadventures at J. A. Dewar Middle School. All well and good, until certain peculiar circumstances result in the characters being pulled into their own game. Now, they face challenges that they had never imagined: class elections, using computers for assignments, and worst of all... algebra! How can they escape from this nightmare and return to their own realm?

I found this book delightfully amusing. The characters were great, the pacing kept me reading at a brisk clip, and the premise was just such fun. Recommended for middle-school fantasy enthusiasts, and anyone who's ever rolled for initiative. ( )

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from BookCon 2019 and Balzer + Bray in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This is definitely not the type of book I would normally pick up for myself. Even as this ARC has been sneaking closer and closer to the top of my TBR, I’ve found myself dreading it. It’s just so… solidly… not something I would have chosen, based on the cover and the description?

But I gotta be honest, y’all. Homerooms and Hall Passes was actually pretty entertaining!

At no point did this book take itself seriously, and thank goodness for that because if this took itself seriously, it would have been intolerable. There were a lot of chuckle moments. Now, right off the bat, Homerooms and Hall Passes is clearly digging on Dungeons & Dragons. I’m not sure if there are any D&D players here, but my experience of this sector of nerd subculture is that there are two dominant types – people who are doing it for fun, and people who take it very seriously. If you find yourself in the second camp, Homerooms and Hall Passes will not be a good fit.

This is definitely a middle grade book. The writing is simple, there are silly meme jokes, and the characters are only as developed as they need to be. I should also mention that the character are stereotypes. This is intentional – they’re all based on typical D&D character classes so, yeah, the thief steals and the barbarian yells and the paladin is very righteous and honest. They’re all good, but don’t expect anything surprising from them. There’s also a good gender balance, which I appreciated.

The plot is a typical good vs. evil quest. Again, nothing really surprising here. The story moves along at a steady pace. This story is really more of a novelty story, with the fun and unique item of flipping D&D upside down and instead having fantasy characters ported into a typical middle school situation.

As far as the characters go, I think Thromdurr was my favorite. As the Barbarian character type, he reminded me of Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy. There were a lot of jokes coming from his character and a lot of really stereotypical angry outbursts… a lot of ALL CAPS moments. But it was fun. Also the Epic Boss Battle at the end was fun.

As far as Homerooms and Hall Passes goes, I’m still not in love with it and a book for me but I think it was well executed for what it was. It was an entertaining read and I think that middle grade readers will find it amusing. ( )