Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert, #1)
Olivia Dade
Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he’d be finished in Hollywood. April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her “real life”—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction. On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she’s Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep from her. With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?
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Your rating:
Predictable but solid. Upped from 3 stars to 4 because I appreciate the size representation.
04 stars
OVERALL: I enjoyed this celebrity romance full of body positivity, nerdiness, sexy times, and a fair dose of psychology too!
Content warnings: abusive families, lying, fat shaming
My book review video: https://youtu.be/uEY-z89phgY
Marcus is a famous, smoking hottt TV star whose outward persona is 'beautiful, but dim' and he hides his true self from most people, and also hides the fact that he writes fanfiction that criticizes and corrects all the content that is done wrong on the show. April is a fat geologist fangirl who gets internet hate when she posts a picture of herself in cosplay--and she reluctantly agrees to a date when Marcus tries to shut down the haters.
On this date, Marcus learns that she also writes fanfic and is actually one of his closest online friends, one he kinda has feelings for! But he can't tell her his screen name, lest his career be in danger, but he pursues her and they begin dating.
I really enjoyed the writing of this book! In addition to being funny and sarcastic, I thought it was steamy and clever too. There are parallels drawn between the 'layers' of the story: the characters, their online personas, and the fictional characters they're fans of, and I thought was written amazingly well!
There's great fat rep, as well as dyslexia rep, and I didn't feel like any of the times these topics were addressed were too 'preachy' to the reader, but handled well.
Both April and Marcus have crappy families that have a history of being abusive to each of them, and I found these elements to be insightful and opportunities to bring in other sources of conflict and tension.
There are lots of themes of being true to oneself and finding people/community that will support you for who you are instead of wanting to change you--these were great thru-lines.
It seems like the other reviews I've seen that have some criticism are about the fanfiction elements, which I don't feel I'm particularly able to speak to and want to give more thought on.
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