Role Model by Rachel Reid
Published 2021 · 90,750 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Romance, LGBTQ+ Fiction
How hard is Role Model to read?
Role Model scores 20 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 24 out of 100
- A contemporary sports romance written in plain, accessible language with hockey and social media talk. It sits close to Beach Read and It Ends with Us in its everyday register.
- Sentence structure: 26 out of 100
- Commercial romance prose built on direct, conversational sentences. Like Beach Read, it asks little of the reader grammatically.
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- The story centers on concrete events: a trade, a team, a relationship, and the choice of coming out publicly. Ideas about self-acceptance emerge through personal experience, as in It Ends with Us.
- Information density: 25 out of 100
- A linear romance of about 90,000 words with a small cast and a clear plot. Reveals are manageable, similar to Beach Read's comfortable pace.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Romance conventions put feelings and motives in plain view, with emotion stated directly. It is closer to Beach Read than to anything that demands inference.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Genre romance works mainly at the literal level, with little symbolic layering. Its themes of visibility and public image are stated openly.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- The grumpy/sunshine setup brings banter and humor, but the book engages its emotions sincerely. Its tone is closer to It Ends with Us than to satire.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Reviewers praise the emotional ending and note there is no third-act breakup. The genre promises a happy ending, as Beach Read does.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- A linear romance following Troy and Harris from the trade onward, structured like Beach Read.
How Role Model is regarded
Role Model holds a literary regard score of 22 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where the story of Role Model takes place
- North America, 2020s (2021), the main setting