Dammmmmmnnnnnnn! Olivia Dade keeps getting better and better. She doesn’t need to, she was already pretty close to perfect, but she keeps doing it anyway. I received and advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

April Whittier is a geologist who in her down time writes fanfic under the name UltimateLaviniaStan. Her fandom of choice is an incomplete book series retelling of the Aeneid, which has been adapted into a tv show (like Game of Thrones). April has kept her real life and her online life separate, but now she wants to stop compartmentalizing her life and let the people in different areas of her life know all of her. In her fanfic community, she has become particularly close with Book!AeneasWouldNever.

Marcus Caster-Rupp has just finished filming his last scene as Aeneas in the final season of Gods of the Gates and he is ready to shed his public persona as good looking but not too bright. Marcus started writing fix-it fanfic as a way of expressing his frustration with the tv show scripts. He is Book!AeneasWouldNever and he has to keep it a secret or risk losing his career and a lot of money. He considers UltimateLavineaStan one of his best friends.

Both are at transition points and wanting to be more open and honest about who they are. In that spirit, April posts a picture of herself in cosplay on Twitter and some trolls predictably start fat shaming her. They tag Marcus into their nastiness. Marcus asks her on a date. April accepts. This story isn’t about how a ridiculously handsome actor can date a fat woman and fall in love. April’s weight is a part of who she is and it informs the way she interacts with the world. It is never a real issue between them. Marcus thinks April is gorgeous. He is already half in love with his anonymous writing partner and when she inadvertently reveals that she is UltimateLaviniaStan, it doesn’t take much to tip him all the way over. Of course, he doesn’t tell her about his alter ego and, of course, his secret online identity is a looming problem.

Olivia Dade does two things in this book that I normally hate – secret identity and grand public gesture – but she does them so well and so organically I don’t hate them. Marcus is so used to conforming himself to other people’s expectations and being rejected when he does not meet them, that keeping the secret when he knew it would hurt April feels like exactly the kind of thing Marcus would do. Everyone agrees it was a bad choice. The way Dade shows them resolve the hurt gets into spoiler territory, so I will leave it at she makes it work. There are a couple of grand public gestures and neither are intended by the person making the gesture to be a grand public statement that they’ve changed and are worthy of love now. Again, going too much into why they work gets spoilery.

Self-inflicted angst aside, the world of Marcus and April is so comfortable. It has taken me a long time to write this review. Partly it’s because I loved the book so much it took a while to focus my thoughts. Partly it’s because every time I return to this review I end up rereading Spoiler Alert. It’s not an angst free book, but it is soft and comfortable.

Not everyone is going to like the interstitials, and not all of the interstitials work for me. But I did enjoy the way they deepened understanding of the online relationship between April and Marcus before they meet in person.

I know I'm reading a, by my standards, average books when I know for a fact I do not want to DNF the book, but I also find myself skimming through chapters to get the main plot beats of the story until the end. That was the kind of reading experience I had with Spoiler Alert.

I found April and Marcus like-able enough but even now, three days after finishing the book, I can't think much about either of them that stands out to me except both MCs had awful relationships with their parents, Marcus hides behind multiple personas and has dyslexia, April has trust issues and likes "digging" deeper than what's on the surface which attracted her to her geologic career choice and makes her an insightful partner for the closed-up Marcus, oh, and both write fanfiction for a television show that Marcus stars in, of course. Which while these are interesting characteristics or plot points at face-value, they didn't really culminate into the fun, charming adventure of a story I was hoping for. There was definitely more pain and hurt in this book than I expected which doesn't it automatically make it an average read for me, it's just that this time it was not a compelling read.

I agree with other reviewers that (maybe with the exception of Alex) besides our MCs all the other characters were one dimensional. I think I may have enjoyed this book more if there was more to the story then fanfiction and fandom used mainly as a device to comment on social issues like fatphobia and misogyny, miscommunication between the main couple, and flat supporting characters/awful parents.

That's just me though. This book has clearly spoken to a lot of reviewers in a positive, meaningful way, so this is just one of those "not my cup of coffee" type of books.

This is my first Olivia Dade book, and I think there is a quality of her writing that I do enjoy, so I will try other books that she has written - I'm especially interested in upcoming book that will feature Alex, a side character from Spoiler Alert.

Olivia Dade's Spoiler Alert is fantastic! The main characters are vulnerable but make a great pair. I can't wait for her next book!

Spoiler Alert is an enchanting romance set in the world of fanfiction and fandom. April Whittier is a geologist who likes to write fanfiction in her free time about her favorite pairing in the Gods of the Gates universe. She writes under the pen name of Unapologetic Lavinia Stan and is close with another fan who posts and betas her stories that goes under the pen name of Book!AeneasWouldNever. Little does April know that the person she has been communicating with is Marcus Caster-Rupp, the star of the television version Gods of the Gates. He is frustrated by the direction the television show has taken, and works through this by writing fanfiction.

Things take a turn when April posts a picture of herself in Lavinia cosplay, and she gets hate on the internet because of her size. She is asked out on a date by Marcus to stick it to the internet haters, but as they meet, they form a close connection quickly. She reveals her online persona, but he does not reveal his, for fear that if it gets out, his career can be ruined.

This is a lovely mix of romance and fandom, and will bring joy to readers who are a part of those worlds. Readers familiar with fanfiction will especially enjoy the fic snippets and shorthand used throughout. Both Marcus and April are well-fleshed out characters, and it is appreciate that they each have their own baggage to work through in order for their relationship to work. While this could be seen as a relatively light-hearted romance, the book does touch on issues such as emotional abuse, fat-phobia, ableism, and anxiety, Minor quibbles were that the story dragged a bit in the middle after the couple first get together and before the climax, and a continued issue is that communication would solve so many of their issues (which is the case with so many romances. If there is a secret involved, it will come out), and the reader knows what's coming. Secondary characters were also entertaining. I also greatly appreciate the thinly veiled analogy to the Game of Thrones fandom and television show.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for providing me with this advance reader copy for review.

How I loved this story of April and Marcus. I loved the fact where he looked past the Hollywood “size 0. April was comfortable with herself and didn’t care what others thought, including her parents. I also loved the way Dade portrayed Marcus in this book too. He had his own struggles to overcome as well.

The book seemed to have a Game of Thrones theme to it with “fan-fiction” thrown in the mix in alternating chapters. I was not a fan of TV series, but the theme flowed nicely with the book.

Overall, I thought it was a enjoyable read with an excellent plot line.

Thank you to HarperCollins and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Overall rating, 4.5 ⭐️

I ADORED this book. The premise was fresh and unique, and the characters were multilayered. Every time I picked up this book, I couldn't put it back down. This book was fun while also dealing with important issues.

I was given a copy of Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade in exchange for an honest review by Netgalley.

I thought this was pretty cute. The setting seemed a bit ridiculous but I was ready to jump on board. It was fast paced and fun. Things I feel like the book did well. The discussion with dyslexia and the pressure families can put onto their children, especially when they're intellectuals. Gatekeeping about consuming audiobooks. It is reading. Stop trying shame others. Body positivity in a realistic way. Parents that don't understand how incredibly damaging they are. Fandom, at times painfully accurate. Also the not so subtle shade towards the last few seasons of Game of Thrones. All great.

Things that didn't work so well. At times the miscommunication drove me nuts. I didn't think we needed a third act break up. Also at times the events of the story were so extra that it took me out of the story. Also some of the messages expressed were too forced for me at times. It didn't need to be repeated over and over.

That being said, I enjoyed reading this. I'm actually really intrigued about the next book. I definitely will be picking it up.

3.5

As someone who felt personally wronged by Game of Thrones in its final season, I really enjoyed this. Marcus Caster-Rupp, our hero, plays Aeneas on a Game of Thrones style show, and in response to the frustrating character arc the show-runners have given him, he writes fan-fiction where he corrects all the wrongs about his character, especially the failed marriage with Aeneas's love interest, Lavinia. Through fan-fiction, he meets April, a fellow author who also cosplays as Lavinia. April has no idea that her online friend is a superstar, and through a chance viral Twitter encounter, the two end up on a date. But Marcus has built up a public persona to deflect away from his dyslexia and any show criticism, and he's afraid that if he comes to clean about who he is, both offline and online, April won't be able to forgive him.
This was a lot of fun! It's a celebration of all things nerd culture, and there are snippets of fake fan-fiction throughout the book that were hilarious. I appreciated Dade's depiction of both characters having troubled relationships with their parents that were beyond saving, which I think is something that is not frequently portrayed in romance novels. Both April and Marcus really found their tribe with their online community and with each other. The reason this wasn't a five star for me was the drama over Marcus lying to April. I hate when characters lie, and I know the book needs a dark moment near the end, but I wanted them to just communicate better.

This was a really enjoyable and distracting romantic comedy. As a person who has enjoyed fan fiction the idea that a show’s star could not only be interested in reading but in writing some was in itself a hook for me to want to read this story. As a lifelong overweight person it was a story I needed to read. I’m not talking about a story where the fat girl gets the attractive guy, although that is very nice, but I needed this story where both main characters have to face and overcome their insecurities both visible and not. I loved that both main characters were finding each other they were much more importantly finding themselves. The writing was fun and I enjoyed the snippets of fan fiction or bad scripts in between the chapters. I laughed, I cried who could ask for anything more? I guess I could because when I got to the end and saw there will be a sequel with two characters we met but didn’t get to get to know nearly enough about next year.

Going into SPOILER ALERT, Olivia Dade’s newest novel, I knew that the potential for me to love the book was high. I mean, as a fan fiction writer who has developed meaningful relationships through shared interests and a love of writing, I couldn’t help but think Marcus and April’s story would make me, at a minimum, smile. Which it absolutely did; it also made my heart ache a little, made me laugh out loud, and made me cheer for Marcus and April as they mastered the obstacle course of falling in love.

In many ways, SPOILER ALERT is a perfect example of romantic fan fiction. Superstar falls in love with overweight fan of his TV show-in one form or another-has been written hundreds of times by writers that want to be the star of their own story. But SPOILER ALERT is so much more. Olivia Dade truly delivers as she maps out an unlikely romance between two people that will delight readers.

Both Marcus and April write fan fiction and, as they embraced the anonymity of writing under a pen name, they form a relationship and come to depend on each other as the other’s beta reader and as trusted friends. Dade really nails this aspect of writing fan fiction. The beauty of fan fiction is how people engage. Writing is very personal, sharing it with strangers a chapter at a time magnifies that, creating a bubble of closeness. Dade portrays this perfectly.

When circumstances lead to Marcus and April meeting in real life--with only Marcus aware of their online relationship--things aren’t as easy. Both April and Marcus carry baggage that defines them in the real world. From Marcus’s struggle with dyslexia to April’s body issues there are mines aplenty for them to trip, sometimes with painful, heart wrenching results.

One of the things I loved about SPOILER ALERT is how Dade doesn’t hesitate to lead her characters into uncomfortable situations. While there’s wonderful banter between Marcus and April and true sexual chemistry, neither are ready to trust anyone. Starting with their parents and following them throughout life, both were constantly told that they weren’t enough. That they were stupid or fat. That they just needed to work harder or eat better. And, so on.

The beauty of SPOILER ALERT is how Dade brings all of these things together in a meaningful way. There’s lots of laughter and personal growth as Marcus and April fall in love, and for me, that’s what makes this book a must read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for honest feedback.

This book is just lovely. I couldn't put it down. I loved all the characters (except the terrible parents, of course). It was so cute, but also covered some serious issues that were handled appropriately. I will highly recommend this to library patrons. It's got a great cover and I can't wait for Alex's story.

It is a delight to see part of yourself in a book but it isn’t just because there is a fat redhead on the cover that I felt represented. The very geeky theme of fandom and cosplay felt familiar as well but the most important theme to me was online friends are real friends. I’m still friends with people I met in Buffy fandom 20 plus years ago.

Another theme I found interesting was when your romantic partner has two lives. It makes sense for an actor to have more than one persona but those online friends have multiple facets as well. I met my husband doing historical reenactment and we had to figure out if there were differences in how we presented in costume and modern clothes and if those differences matters. (Turns out we are the same no matter what we are wearing.)

What does this have to do with the character Marcus and April in Spoiler Alert? The interaction of online presence, public persona, private life, and how one presents to one’s parents are all critical to Spoiler Alert. These interactions make the story much more than the non-traditionally beautiful woman meets the handsome prince slash hunky movie star.

The depiction of a fandom is spot on in this book. I’ve not done fan fiction but I am involved in costuming and cosplay both online and at cons. How people interact in these communities felt authentic.

Many thanks to Olivia Dade for bringing these characters and this community to life. There is a non-spoilery bit near the end that deserves to be out in the world.
April is asked about her relationship with Marcus by a young fat woman and interprets the look in the girl’s eye with this:

Please tell me people who look like us can be loved.
Please tell me people who look like us can be desired
Please tell me people who look like us can have happy endings.

Is that not the essence of Romance?

I consider it a personal failing that this is my first book by Olivia Dade. It was sweet, funny, sexy, swoon-worthy, and heartbreaking all at the same time. I love that Marcus wasn't a swaggering alpha male. He was kind and vulnerable and wanted to be a better person. He was also willing to let April be his protector and his love and respect for her was clear. Despite the constant digs April got for her size, she knew her worth and was unwilling to settle for less than she deserved. She was also able to take a step back from her emotions and see things from Marcus's perspective. The fact that she could admit when she was wrong even when he'd hit on a deep insecurity was admirable. The Interstitials were brilliantly, intentionally horrible and I wish the movies were real because they would be hilarious. This will definitely be a book I read again.

This book was such a treat. I really loved chatting with Olivia about the process of writing this book as it involves world building in romance.

Olivia will be on the What to Read Next Podcast on publication day.

Spoiler Alert is a fun and refreshing contemporary romance. I love April’s character! She is sassy, strong-willed, and intelligent with a fantastic sense of humor. Marcus is interesting, as well. Talented, smart, and honorable, he is often misjudged. Marcus and April have a lot in common. Both have difficult family lives and deal with insecurities, yet they both persevere. Marcus is thought of as a shallow, handsome star, but no one takes the time to learn who he really is, not even his family. April is generally confident but is often harshly judged because of her weight. Both characters are judged by their appearance and are hurt by people’s misconceptions, which connects them even more.

The romance between April and Marcus is fantastic! It is both sweet and steamy, which I love. Marcus hates being judged for his appearance or his name, and he identifies with April, who is looked down on because she is overweight. They both put up walls to protect themselves from the harsh judgment of others, especially their awful parents. However, Marcus and April are real with each other. They both let down their guards and accept each other without judgment or reservation.

One other aspect of the book that I like is the use of online conversations and interactions as well as scripts. Being able to read past chats between Marcus and April adds depth to the story and characters and makes you see how connected the couple feels.

The story also highlights the power of social media. Early in the story, April is fat-shamed after posting a cosplay picture of herself. The cyber-bullying she endures is malicious, and, sadly, realistic. Conversely, the story also demonstrates how social media connects people that wouldn’t otherwise know each other. I like that the good and bad elements of social media are equally examined.

Spoiler Alert is a great story for readers who enjoy contemporary romance with well-developed characters, fan fiction humor, and a steamy love story. Though it is a fun read, the book also tackles serious issues like fat-shaming, bullying on social media, body positivity, dyslexia, and more with delicacy and realism. Thanks so much to Netgalley and Harper Collins Publishers for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book sooo much! It’s fun and funny and touching all at once. I did not want it to end. I loved the witty heroine and all the little extras between chapters to develop the characters. If you love fandoms, you should read this book right now!

Often, I find romance novels with a plus-size heroine make the whole story about the person’s weight and someone loving them despite it. This book handled it all so much better. It presented the very real ways fat shaming hurts people while still showing a woman can be fat and sexy. It’s was so refreshing! And the sex scenes are hot!!

The book goes back and forth between their perspectives perfectly and made me fall in love with both characters. I cannot wait to read this author’s next book!

I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher and Net Galley in return for a fair review.

When a hot, hunk actor sticks up for a fan of his ‘God of the Gates’ series - he offers her a date to show the Twitter world he see no size in a gorgeous woman.
He has no idea until mid-date that his outspoken date, April, is non other than his best friend on his fanfic site where they both write alternative fiction to the God of Gates series. If word got out, Marcus’s career would be doomed.
A steamy affair ensues between the two, shocking the fanfic and Gods of Gates world...
Will their pasts and emotions help or hinder this budding relationship?

Not gonna lie, I requested an ARC of this book from Netgalley purely because the MFC is a plus sized woman, and romances that aren’t cliche and weird for plus sized women are few and far in between. When I finally got around to reading the blurb, I was hooked even more. I mean cmon, I love nerd shit. & Spoiler Alert revolves around the MCs meeting because of fan fiction... Like cmon!

Marcus is a hot movie star that no one takes seriously, not even his parents. Often thought of as just another pretty face and dumb, Marcus is incredibly intelligent and witty. April is a confident plus size woman, who loves herself and her body, but is often looked down on and not considered beautiful due to her size. Even her own parents are shitty towards her because of her weight!

This was my first book by Olivia Dade and it definitely made me a fan of hers! Not only is Spoiler Alert a cute read, it also touches on fat shaming, toxic parenting, self love and acceptance, and basically not to judge a book by its cover. Seriously amazing! The MCs romance was super adorable! & I loved that fanfics brought these two together, and that they were able to bring out more confidence and self love from each other because of each other.

Can I tell you how excited I was when I got the NetGalley approval for this book?? I’ve been hearing about it for a while now, and the premise had me absolutely screaming in glee. Fanfic writer goes out on Twitter date with famous actor! Who is secretly also a fanfic writer! WHAT.

This book reads like fanfiction of fanfiction, and I love it. It’s the ultimate AU. Here’s the part where I out myself as an avid fanfic reader: you can give me all of your Stargate: Atlantis slash fics IMMEDIATELY (I won’t say no to Stucky, either). I spend nearly every night reading fic for a couple of hours before I go to sleep, and I work my way through the communities that build up around fandoms and pairings and tropes. When you love a certain OTP (or, ahem, OT3 or 4, but we won’t get into that here), you find yourself recognizing and following the improbably-named authors whose work you enjoy. A lot of times, they follow each other, too. They beta-read for each other, send out writing prompts, create forums and challenges and communities. And they are hugely supportive. This book captures so much of that, and it gave me the exact same feeling of safety and comfort I get going back to read my favorite fics.

Let’s start with the humor here. This book is funny as hell. The parade of improbably hilarious terrible movies in Marcus’ backstory were a fantastic ongoing gag. His interactions with his castmates after seven years together were delightful; I love an ensemble cast that feels like family, in real life and in fiction, and seeing the ways this group grew together made me want to see more of them (I’m extremely ready for the next book!). This book gives good banter in every way; between the main characters, between their friends, and even in the interstitials, which feature both extremely well-replicated fanfiction story introductions (complete with AO3 tags of absolute perfection, by the way) and hilariously pointed excerpts from fake movies that emphasize that Hollywood’s treatment of women has historically been… not great. Even the chat logs of the fanfiction server that April and Marcus use are fantastic (and you could feel the authentic sense of fanfic community coming through here – sometimes ‘people you met online’ are the people who are most intimately involved in your life. It’s the real deal.).
We talk about representation a lot, and I can’t overstate what it felt like to see myself on the page here. April is a lot like me, in her body shape and in the way she feels about her body; she’s a fat girl who grew up fat and understands what it means to navigate society in a fat body but also appreciates that her body is her own, and that it’s worth appreciating. The sex scenes here are gorgeous and SO HOT; they neither shy away from April’s fatness nor fetishize it. Her body during sex is described narratively with the same frank appreciation that the character has for sex in and of itself; April’s a fic writer who knows eroticism, and she doesn’t shy away from it in her personal life, either.

We meet April after she’s done the work to overcome her a lot issues, which is deeply satisfying for me. The book starts out with her taking the action she needs to set herself up in a life that is better for her own mental health – she’s making the move to a new job, and her reasons for doing so are clearly laid out. Not that I don’t love to see people going to therapy in romance novels – trust me, I do – but I really love to see a plot featuring someone who has already GONE to therapy, built up her own self awareness, and created the life she wants to live for herself. That stuff takes work – we all know it – but it’s so nice to see that kind of work paying off in the present instead of battling through it all with the characters. There are reminders that there’s no such thing as a cure-all, especially when your life or your body isn’t the one that mainstream society expects. Being comfortable with yourself doesn’t mean that others will be comfortable with you, but April has done the work to help herself move past worrying about others’ expectations, something Marcus is still working on.

And Marcus himself! First of all, the idea of having one of the actors on a beloved show be an eager writer of fanfiction for the same show because he’s unsatisfied with the scripts he gets is absolute genius, and every single author who has seen this book is bowing down to Olivia Dade for having it and writing it. It’s utterly brilliant. Anyone who’s followed popular culture at all can read the references to Game of Thrones in the fictional Gods of the Gates show – I have never seen GoT (don’t try to convince me to, it’s a choice, not an oversight), but even I recognized the digs about the showrunners and the final season and snickered wildly. For engaged fans, this is a deeply satisfying read on a lot of layers, is all I’m saying. But back to Marcus – whose backstory is painful, and who’s dug himself a hole of his own making, in more ways than one. Normally, I really hate plots where the conflict revolves around mistaken identities that are really just people not identifying themselves to each other – this is probably the first book I’ve ever read where a reasonable explanation was provided for the secrecy. And once that reasonable explanation wears off, Marcus is in too deep – we understand why he doesn’t tell April his last remaining secret, and we suffer the agonies of guilt and terror along with him. There were moments where I wasn’t sure that I was going to believe in a reconciliation after everything fell apart; April’s clarity in defining what Marcus has done to her is so good – ably assisted by all that therapy! – that I was nodding along with her even as I wondered how the author would turn it around believably. (Obviously, it worked, or we wouldn’t be here – I only review the stuff I love, remember?) Marcus has a lot to overcome himself; he’s done an incredible job of finding the ways to accommodate his dyslexia that he needs (and, like April, I’m still mad at his parents, by the way). But he’s struggling to overcome what are essentially his own coping mechanisms; as a character, he’s a vivid picture of the way that we can trap ourselves without meaning to, by doing what should be the right thing, or seems like the right thing at the time. The solutions that served young Marcus to cope with the trauma he received at home were an easy way to cope with the expectations of his professional career; it worked for him, but it’s not RIGHT for him. Dade’s ability to make somebody who is practically too handsome to live as well as being rich and successful a believably sympathetic character in 2020 is beyond impressive.

The ending here was cathartic and satisfying – so many things were resolved (and one thing was resolved in a way that aided the happy ending AND set up the sequel, WELL DONE) and we got to see both April and Marcus succeeding at what they needed to both individually and together. I think by now everyone who reads my reviews knows that I really love a character arc that’s moved forward by the characters themselves, not the magical power of love. Love’s a bonus; April and Marcus get to have each other because they’ve worked hard on their own to become the sort of people who deserve each other. The con experience was utterly familiar and extremely delightful. Frankly, I’m ready to read real fanfiction about these fake fanfiction people. I kind of hope it happens.

The upshot of everything is exactly what I said on Twitter when I finished the book: I finished reading, and now I’m mad, because I wanted to keep reading.

What a delightful romance this turned out to be! Really appreciate such a thoughtful approach to both of the characters’ insecurities and especially a female romantic lead that isn’t teeny tiny. Both characters are so well developed and complex, and it was a joy to see them fall in love.