This article examines Leanne Yong’s young adult debut Two Can Play That Game as one of the few Australian romance novels to foreground an Asian-Australian character. The narrative unfolds through the popular enemies-to-lovers trope, following Malaysian-Australian aspiring-game-developer Sam Khoo’s coming-of-age journey. Through close reading and analysis of reader reviews on the Goodreads and Storygraph platforms, I explore how the novel negotiates cultural specificities, gender, and sexuality within the framework of romance and its promise of a Happily-Ever-After. I argue that Yong expands the genre’s inclusivity by centring a demisexual protagonist whose narrative challenges normative assumptions about intimacy and success. While the text reproduces certain binaries between “Asian” and “Australian” identities, it simultaneously interrogates stereotypes such as the “model minority” and the “fake gamer girl”. Reviews highlight the representational significance of this approach, reflecting both the appetite for Asian-Australian protagonists and the genre’s shift toward diversity.
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Sam’s sexuality on the ace-spectrum is suggested, never explicitly labelled. Confirmation of her asexuality comes only through the author’s annotation of the first three chapters, which she made available through her newsletter and where she acknowledges Sam’s “ace-ness” and credits editorial encouragement for prompting her to explore it further (27). This approach contrasts with Carter’s findings, where most novels (47 novels; 72%) make ace-spectrum orientations visible in the text, and only a minority (seven; 11%) reveal them through author commentary, mostly on social media (2020, 7). (122)
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From as early as page 4, the novel weaves in details of Sam’s second-generation Malaysian-Australian background. These cultural elements often appear subtly – similarly to the treatment of Sam’s sexuality– as evidenced in the author’s annotations on the first three chapters. (125)
Here's the abstract:
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