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Ruby was the reason this book worked so well for me. She’s observant and outspoken, but she isn’t oblivious to the effect her words have on other people. She wants to be herself and still be loved by her father. That vulnerability gives weight to a story full of pranks, disguises and increasingly improbable events.

Ali Hazelwood has built an entire literary empire out of highly intelligent women, emotionally constipated men, and workplaces vibrating with unresolved tension, and Two Can Play slides neatly into that lineage. This time, though, the setting shifts from laboratories and academia into the world of video game development, painted as a landscape of crunch culture, professional rivalry, creative obsession, and people surviving almost entirely on caffeine and bad sleep schedules.