So This Is War

Meghan Quinn’s novel So This is War is a contemporary romance novel and the fifth and final installment in Quinn’s Vancouver Agitators series, which falls under the sports romance subgenre. The first-person points of view of the main characters, Levi Posey and Wylie Wood, trace the evolution of Levi and Wylie’s romance. When Wylie says she’s dropping out of graduate school to pursue art, her dad, Coach Will Wood of the Vancouver Agitators hockey team, forces her to work as his defenseman Levi’s personal assistant. Levi and Wylie are attracted to each other but can’t act on their desires because they’re beholden to Wylie’s dad. Their inability to pursue a relationship incites the narrative conflict and spurs the novel’s thematic explorations of the Power Dynamics in Relationships, Identity and Self-Discovery Through Love, and the Balance Between Personal and Professional Life.

This guide refers to the original 2024 Hot-Lanta Publishing paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide describe sexual violence and exploitation.

Plot Summary

Twenty-one-year-old Wylie Wood meets her father Coach Will Wood’s defenseman Levi Posey at a hotel bar. Wylie and Levi are immediately attracted to each other and consider spending the night together. However, Wylie abruptly ends their flirtatious encounter when she sees her father entering the hotel dining room.

A year later, Wylie confronts her dad about dropping out of graduate school. She’s studying business but has realized she wants to pursue graphic design and art instead. Wood is furious with this proposition, insisting Wylie doesn’t know what she’s doing. Finally, he agrees to let her take a semester off. She can quit school thereafter if she manages to hold a job and support herself in the meantime. He then says she must move out of his house within the week and begin working as Levi’s personal assistant the next day.

Wood tells Levi that he must hire Wylie in exchange for a previous favor: Wood covered for him when Levi created messy dynamics with his sexual partners and hockey opponents. As Wylie’s boss, Levi is supposed to make her life miserable. Wood promises to send Levi explicit guidelines for his and Wylie’s employment arrangement. Levi doesn’t understand why Wood would want to be so cruel to his daughter, but he doesn’t question his coach.

Levi is shocked when he discovers Wylie is the girl from the bar the year prior. He’s still attracted to her, but Wylie insists that they put the past behind them and keep things professional. Levi agrees. He then invites Wylie to live in the nanny's apartment under his home. She soon moves in, and they set up the ground rules for their working relationship. Wylie is confident she’ll excel at the job and develop her art in the meantime. However, Levi starts giving her nonsensical tasks like cleaning stains, buying bagels in the middle of the night, and retyping full-length books. With the help of her friend Sandie, Wylie soon discovers that Levi and her dad have set her up.

Wylie decides to sexually arouse Levi to punish him for manipulating her. She starts wearing skimpy clothing around the apartment and touching Levi in explicit ways. She invades his room when he’s masturbating and comes into the bathroom when he’s showering. She hopes that he’ll become so uncomfortable with this sexual tension that he’ll admit his faults. However, Levi soon realizes that Wylie is playing him and decides to manipulate her in turn. The two engage in a battle where they toy with each other for as long as possible. Meanwhile, their desire to be together grows. However, they still can’t act on their true feelings because Wylie doesn’t want to upset her dad, and Wood doesn’t want to get kicked off the hockey team.

Finally, Wylie and Levi have sex. They start to date shortly thereafter. They admit that their games were silly and that they should have spoken up about what was going on. They decide to keep seeing each other in secret and to tell Wood about their relationship when Wylie feels comfortable. Wylie moves upstairs into Levi’s apartment, where Levi creates space for her to work on her art. He stops giving her senseless tasks and encourages her to submit to a logo design competition she’s been pursuing.

Shortly after submitting to the contest, Wylie learns that she won, and the contest host, Patty Ford, wants to work with her. Thrilled about the success, she invades the locker room showers to celebrate with Levi. They start having sex in the locker room when Wood appears and loses his temper. Wood tries to kick Levi off the team, but the manager assures him this isn’t possible. In the weeks following, Levi’s teammates confront Wood and encourage him to change his mind about Levi. Wylie has repeated conversations with her dad during this time too, begging him to invest in their relationship, to give Levi a chance, and to support her creative pursuits. Wood finally has a change of heart after Levi shows him one of Wylie’s drawings.

Wylie and Levi celebrate Christmas together. Levi gives Wylie a gold necklace, and Wylie gives him a scrapbook of erotic drawings she’s made of herself. They hug, kiss, and profess their love to each other.