Next Level Love - Review

Next Level Love

By: Shameez Patel

Narrated By: Shahjehan Khan; Jensen Olaya

Publication: January 20, 2026 by Forever

384 pages

Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Multicultural

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

( Goodreads | Amazon )

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Goodreads description--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?

I listened to Next Level Love when my family was hit with a fever virus. Everyone was down for the count, including me. Having something to listen to helped me pass the time when I felt like I didn't want to move and didn't have the energy to watch TV or hold my Kindle. Of course, I find that my enjoyment of a story tends to go up the faster I finish it. That being said, I finished Next Level Love in one day.

Lincoln is an engineer and gamer. His dad died when he was young, about eight, I think, when he was hit by a car as he was walking down the road. The road had no sidewalks. So, Lincoln has focused his engineering career on roads. He also has ADHD, so he struggles with distractions and has developed coping mechanisms to help him through his work. But he's always struggled to connect with other people. He has a group of friends, but he has always felt a little bit like an outsider with them. His mother is remarrying and moving out of his childhood home. She is expecting him to pack his father's office. Lincoln is being offered a trial run as a supervisor at his company, but he has to figure out how to manage people, specifically an intern.

Elizabeth is the stepdaughter of a famous guy. Yet she's escaped him and his influence and is trying to make her way in the engineering field. She's landed an internship that she's not sure she earned. Everyone treats her a specific way due to her last name (her stepfather's name). In her free time, she loves to play online games. Only she's beginning to suspect that the Link she's been chatting with online for years might actually be her boss.

I really appreciated that Next Level Love didn't have any on-page spice. Things "fade to black," so to speak. I can't remember any cursing, but if there was any, it would have been minimal. To be fair, I wasn't in my top brain while listening, so I might have missed it. But I love it when a story can prove that those things aren't needed to make a good and enjoyable book.

My eight-year-old son has, I believe, undiagnosed ADHD, so seeing an adult character with a rewarding and complicated career, with a friend group, and a love life. It helps my mama heart to see that some of the struggles we are having now might be able to be overcome because some days it feels hopeless, which I know isn't true.

The dual narrators, Shahjehan Khan and Jensen Olaya, did a great job. I felt their performances, and they never pulled me out of the story. That's the note of a good narration job.

Next Level Love was a really enjoyable book for me. I liked the ADHD representation. You could tell that Lincoln isn't white, but his race wasn't harped on, which I also appreciated. The relationship and all of the side pieces of the story came together very well, and every piece of the puzzle popped off the page feeling real and well-rounded. Next Level Love gets 4.5 Stars. Have you read (or listened to) Next Level Love? What did you think? Let me know!