I think I just found my new favorite author and my favorite book all in one. Where has Olivia Dade been all my life and why am I just now finding her writing? This book is everything I ever wanted in a romance. The characters fully think things through and make appropriate decisions (even if they are human and do dumb things also), there's emotional depth and complexity. The tension was palpable from the beginning of the characters' meeting, and Dade writes hands down the best intimate scenes I've ever read. The character diversity is so refreshing for this genre, especially with the way describes the beauty and allure in those differences. While there was one thing that was super frustrating throughout the book, it was unavoidable in order for the plot to exist. Because of that, I can honestly say that I have no complaints. I will be buying this book, reading it again, and delving into Dade's other books!

April is a curvy girl who has just landed the date of a lifetime, with Marcus, the handsome, fit star of her favorite TV show. He also happens to be the focus of a lot of the fan fiction she writes. Authentic, complex characters will pull you in and keep you reading in this steamy romance. I could not put it down!

Easily one of my favorite books of the year! The fat representation was so validating, as well. I hope that the buzz (amd hopeful success!) of Spoiler Alert will lead to many more own-voices fat representation in traditionally published romance. Dade expertly discussed fatphobia and emotional abuse while ensuring a sexy and soft romance at the same time.

I took a few days after finishing this book to try and compile my thoughts into something coherent to write a good review. Honestly? I may still just come up short. Spoiler Alert is a great book that combines romance/comedy/angst and fandom in a way that feels personal and makes you feel heard and validated. The main character April is a larger girl who is heavily involved in a GOT like fandom. When she gets the chance to go on a date with the main character from her favorite show, things seem to change for her overnight.

I loved how every other chapter was interspersed with either AO3 snippets or clips from a fake script for a movie or TV show that Marcus was in. It really helped to make you feel fully immersed in the world that the author created. I didn't want the book to end but I'm very happy to hear she's working on a sequel 😊

I like this book it was not exactly what I thought I thought it would be kind of like Comic-Con romance book but it was more of a romance novel with a large woman and a famous actor that just so happened to do fanfiction.I did like the book however it did get confusing at times when they were talking about the different roles that the actor had performed and then you go to what happened eight months ago and then you go to today it was a little complicated.

10,000 swoons! I love a redheaded heroine and this book did not disappoint. Supremely invested in these characters and can't wait to read more from Olivia Dade.

From the summary and the cover I was super excited for. this book and really hoped I would like it. I am so happy to report that I LOVED this book! This book did such a great job of combining humor, romance and issues that need to be talked about more often.

I thought April was such a relatable character and it was so easy to understand her motivations throughout the. book and so deeply empathize with her. I thought the conversations that are had about weight and body positivity are so needed and handled really well. Marcus was a character that was so much more than he appears on the surface and that idea is one that I really liked exploring with him as well as the importance of understanding learning disabilities.

I'm personally not super familiar with fan fiction but I can fangirl with the best of them so I really enjoyed those parts of the story and how the stories being written were mirroring what the characters were going through in their real lives.

The romance was super steamy and I loved how open and honest both characters (but particularly April ) were about what they needed out of the relationship for it to work. The two worked so well together and I really didn't want to see the end of their story.

This book was an absolute delight! Marcus and April were a real joy to read and their meet-cute and subsequent relationship — the ups and downs of dating a celebrity, the trust issues between them and the way they were resolved — really rang true in a very refreshing way. Dade doesn't avoid uncomfortable situations, which is something I really appreciate in romance novels. Love is heard-earned and fiction about love should reflect that, I think. Or at least I prefer it that way.

In that vein, three things really struck me in this book: April's body image issues, Marcus' dyslexia, and both of their relationships with their parents.

I loved that April isn't portrayed and hopelessly ashamed of what her body looks like. She knows she's fat, she struggles with other people's comments about it but she's mostly accepted her appearance and learned to work with it. As a fat woman who has made her peace with fatness, I identified with everything about it, and it was refreshing. Give me more fat heroines who don't really care that they're fat!!

Marcus' dyslexia was also portrayed honestly. I don't have a learning disability, but I do have chronic anxiety, and the struggles of how others perceive people with anxiety and dyslexia seemed kind of similar. The perception of being lazy, disappointing your parents for not being able to finish some tasks. Again, I loved how Dade didn't pull her punches here. It's an uncomfortable situation to portray, but so important!

Finally, their relationship with their parents. I don't identify specifically with either, but I loved how they were portrayed. Sometimes parents are awful and forgiveness is hard. I appreciate how faithfully Dade showed that.

As for the hidden references to the Popular Fantasy Show that Shall Not Be Named, I found them absolutely hilarious and a real treat to find. Someone should make a list of all the references, but I think that would spoil the fun––but trust me when I say, you probably didn't catch all of them; some are REALLY obscure. Props for the research, Olivia!

Olivia Dade's <em>Spoiler Alert </em>is basically an Ashley Poston novel for adults. Though it's not quite a retelling of any kind, it does play on a lot of fandom and pop culture references--Game of Thrones, I think, is the most obvious--and go through a great many of the tropes that are common in celebrity falls in love with a fan romance stories. I'm a pretty big sucker for these kinds of plots and it was no different with <em>Spoiler Alert</em>. And honestly, this is one of the best of these books that I've had the pleasure to read. That said, there was one thing that I absolutely could not stand about this novel.

<b>Diverse characters for the win!</b>

One thing that is very clear after reading this book is that it deserves an <em>immense</em> amount of praise for its characters. <em>Spoiler Alert</em> was such a refreshing take on this long-retold tale in so many ways. I've often found that the celebrity dates a fan trope almost always involves some sort of resistance and PR stunt involving a bad boy dating a good girl to appease producers who want him to clean up his image. And thank everything that Dade's novel had nothing to do with this. There was still a plot about Marcus' image, but it was<em> so much better</em> than the bad boy trope.

Speaking of which, our famous boy has dyslexia! I loved, so much, how this was incorporated into the story. I won't go into details because, <em>spoiler, </em>but I can say that it made this novel incredibly refreshing. This, alongside the impressive intellect of both main characters, is something I could not have appreciated more. Intelligence in this story is the new sexy and I love everything about it.

And, perhaps most importantly, this book is body-positive in the most wonderful of ways. From the cover through the entire novel, an emphasis is placed on body positivity. Of course, you do experience moments in which struggles at the hands of awful people who fat-shame affect the main character, but the overall message within the pages of this book is a good one. And the character development from this own voice's author is phenomenal.

<b>The relationship.</b>

While I do think that the relationship between April and Marcus was a bit rushed in the beginning, I absolutely loved the development that it got as everything progressed. I was especially fond of how the relationship paralleled that of the character Marcus plays in his show and April's favorite character from both the books and their adaptation,  Aeneas and Lavinia. It was such an incredible way to portray the growth their relationship would see as they faced a multitude of issues that all primarily revolved around the idea of trust.

I feel like the relationship kind of followed that of a typical relationship, one with a honeymoon phase that is soon followed up with the moment in which everyone realizes that the honeymoon is over. Quite frankly, I found their relationship <em>infinitely</em> more interesting after the honeymoon phase when everything got a lot more real. It was there, I think, that Dade really shined.

<b>Poston > Dade</b>

Unfortunately, there was one thing that really took a <em>lot </em>away from my ability to love this book. And, to Dade's credit, it's nothing that I really fault her for. I have personal preferences and distaste that dictate what I read and <em>Spoiler Alert</em> is genuinely an exception to the books I typically pick up. I anticipated really enjoying it more so than others in its genre, so I picked it up. I'm glad I did, but at the end of the day, there's a reason that I typically turn to YA novels.

In that same line of thinking, there's a reason why I prefer Ashley Poston's celebrity and fan fall in love and then go to a con story than Olivia Dade's <em>Spoiler Alert</em>.

The reason? Sex.

I don't like to read about it in the novels I pick up. This is why I don't really bother with reading books from the romance genre. I don't like to read about it. I <em>do </em>very much enjoy reading everything that <em>leads up </em>to sex. I like reading the right before moments, those anticipatory pieces that don't actually involve anything graphic. And Dade's novel has a <em>lot </em>of sex. More, I dare say, than most romance novels I've read in the past. The sheer amount of sex is a contributor to why I didn't really care much for the honeymoon phase of Marcus and April's relationship.

<b>Overall.</b>

In the end, this is my personal preference. Frankly, there's a <em>lot </em>to love about Olivia Dade's <em>Spoiler Alert</em>. It's one of the best novels of this trope that I've ever read and I am so glad for that. I'm not in love with it for the reason I mentioned above, but I definitely feel that this book deserves a massive amount of praise. In the end, I'll probably stick to Young Adult rather than delving further into romance. Occasionally I might pick one up if it seems to have an exceptional plot as this one did.

At the end of the day, if you like Poston's kind of stories or this trope in general and also really enjoy explicit scenes in your romance novels, I'd definitely suggest picking this one up. You'll probably fall head over heels.

<em> I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</em>

Review will be live on the Reader Fox blog on July 19, 2020.

What a lovely story! I totally related to April on so many levels, she brought on all the feels! And I loved Marcus! They were so well suited for one another with so many of the same issues just in a slightly different format. I appreciated that April and Marcus were able be figure out what had gone wrong in situations through self reflection. It was my first book by Dade but it won't be my last.

This has everything I want in a romance, the fun settings, for realz feelings and sparkling dialogue !!!

I think it's good that the book has a plus size female main character and that it was represented well!
This is easily one of my favorite romances of the year! I loved both of the main characters and their complex backgrounds and personalities. All the fandom/fanfiction elements were so perfect and sweet! Marcus was the sweetest romantic hero, and April was a great example of an independent woman who also has vulnerabilities and embraces them. There was such great chemistry between them!!!! Can't wait for the next book!

I've been dipping my toe back into the M/F contemporary romance pool lately for some reason, after several years of reading primarily queer romance. Olivia Dade is a fairly new-to-me author (I've only read her story in the He's Come Undone: A Romance Anthology) and I was impressed by Spoiler Alert's quirky, competent heroine, smooth character arcs and sly sense of humor.

April is passionate about her job as a geologist, and she's tired of hiding or apologizing for the other aspects of her personality. She's fat, she writes fan-fiction about two characters from a fantasy television show (not dissimilar to "Game of Thrones" in that the show has gone beyond the book canon and the fans are not happy with its recent direction), and she's ready to show herself to the world by cosplaying her favorite character at an upcoming convention. Unbeknownst to her, she's in a "You've Got Mail/Shop Around the Corner" thing going with Marcus, who is dating her as the handsome but somewhat dim lead actor from her favorite show, while trying not to let her realize that he is also her beta reader on the fanfic site.

Both Marcus and April have parents who were hypercritical of them - Marcus for his (long undiagnosed) dyslexia and April for her weight. Dade shows how their relationship slowly helps them overcome those early hurts and determine their own value while also making them wary of trusting each other with their real selves. The geologist rock analogies are a tad heavy-handed but on target. The book's climactic scene is appropriately swoon-worthy, and their happy ending well-deserved.

I'm not at all familiar with the fan fiction world, so a lot of the references were wasted on me, but I enjoyed the excerpts that April and Marcus wrote. The other"interstitial" chapters highlighting the poorly conceived scripts from Marcus' previous movies and TV shows were hilarious (especially how the common theme is that the female characters exist only to die and give the hero his character arc) and helped illuminate the plot.

There's a little bit too much of information about Marcus' co-star Alex and the woman assigned to keep him from misbehaving; they're obviously the subject of the next book in the series (with a great deal of pegging apparently) but I found them to be distracting sequel bait. Other than that, however, I really enjoyed this book. If this is what contemporary romance looks like in the 2020s I may have missed out by avoiding it for so long.

N.B. I'm not going to comment on the fat representation because it is not something I have personal experience with, but I think readers will appreciate the fact that April is portrayed as a fat, healthy woman whom Marcus finds incredibly attractive.

ARC received by Net Galley in exchange for honest review.

I loved this book! The cover drew me in, and I read this in one day. Marcus Caster-Rupp is an actor on the hit TV show, <i>Gods of the Gates</i>. In his spare time, he writes fanfiction for the <i>Gods of the Gates</i> universe under the alias Book!AeneasWouldNever. He meets Unapologetic Lavinia Stan (aka April Whittier) on the Lavineas Server, and they become good friends. Unapologetic Lavinia Stan is his beta reader, but she has no idea that he actually plays Aeneas on the TV show. When they go on a date after Marcus asks her out after seeing her cosplay photo on Twitter (other fans were bullying her), he realizes that April is his friend. He hides his identity as Book!AeneasWouldNever and pursues a relationship with April. When April learns that he has been lying about his identity, will she be able to trust him and forgive him? Throughout the book there are excerpts of the scripts for the <i>Gods of the Gates</i> television show as well as fanfictions written by Book!AeneasWouldNever and Unapologetic Lavinia Stan. I thought this book really captured the world of fanfiction. It looked like the format of the fanfictions were straight out of AO3 (Archive of Our Own). The other characters were well-developed, and I felt like they added to the book. I liked seeing how Marcus and April's difficult relationships with their parents impacted their relationship. This book was funny, full of romance, and had just the right amount of angst. I also liked that this book addressed the issue of body shaming. April feels really self-conscious of her weight, and seeing how she and Marcus talked about it seemed really realistic. The sex scenes were way spicier than I was expecting (in a good way). I'm looking forward to reading the next book about Alex (Marcus' friend) and Lauren.

For fans of contemporary romance, fanfiction and Mhairi McFarlane.

An absolute delight of a romance about a fanfiction writing geologist and the star of her favorite TV show who fall in love, not realizing--on her part anyway--that they've been reading each other's fanfiction for years. I think it would be hard for anybody who loves reading or writing fanfiction NOT to love this story. Fandom and fanfiction are so intrinsic to the plot that many of the chapter interludes (which I LOVED) were excerpts from the characters' own fanfiction. And while some of the secrecy surrounding Marcus's dual-identity felt a bit contrived and convenient at first (it's a romance! there must be a relationship-ending secret!) it was actually explained / developed enough throughout that I sympathized with his struggle over whether to tell April about his time as her online friend by the end.

The story was just pure adorableness such that I'm going to have to read Olivia Dade's other work now. And I'm eagerly awaiting the Alex / Lauren book coming in 2021!

Basically, if you are a part of the fandom / fanfic community and have any interest in romance, you're definitely going to want to read this book.

What a treat! Truly a pitch perfect romcom. I'm not a fanfic person myself, but I'm aware enough of it as a phenomenon, and I generally love pop culture, so the premise of a fan meeting an actor is just a delight. This has everything I want in a contemporary romance--fun settings, real feelings, sparkling dialogue. It's very specifically in my wheelhouse, because having the female main character be a geologist, having a Bay Area setting, and having a fictional property based on the Aeneid are all true delights for me specifically.

I think it's good to know that the book has a fat female main character, and that issues around her weight are a part of the story. I thought they were handled very well, and the book is just very affirming.

I can already tell this is a book I will come back to again and again, because it's just that delicious.

This is easily one of my favorite romances of the year! I loved both of the main characters and their complex backgrounds and personalities. All the fandom/fanfiction elements were so perfect and clearly done by someone who appreciates fanfiction and being a dedicated part of a fandom. Marcus was the sweetest cinnamon roll of a romantic hero, and April was a great example of a strong, independent woman who also has vulnerabilities and embraces them. There was such great chemistry between the leads, the best combo of grand gestures at the end--I just loved it so much, start to finish! Can't wait for the next story in this series!

When April, an active member of an online fandom for a Game of Thrones-esque fantasy series, posts a cosplay on Twitter, she immediately receives negative backlash from internet trolls about her plus-size body. Marcus, the male lead of the TV show, notices her viral photo and decides to publicly ask her out on a date to take a stance against the body-shaming.

On their date, Marcus realizes something big -- April is actually UnapologeticLaviniaStan, a woman he has been communicating with every night for years on a fandom site under his alias, Book!AeneasWouldNever. Revealing his online identity to her could potentially open himself up to great liability if the show's producers found out he was engaging in anonymous criticisms of the show online, but it would also show her that they have really known each other for years. Marcus guiltily holds his secret close as the relationship between the two grows more serious, fearing that his revelation could undo all of the progress they had made as a couple and as individuals.

But of course, every secret will out itself, eventually.

Overall, a sweet story for fans of body-positive steamy romance that doesn't shy away from harsh criticisms of the sci-fi and fantasy genres' treatment of women.

A star of an epic fantasy tv series secretly writes fan fiction about his character and becomes online friends with a woman who he unknowingly asks out on a date after a Twitter post of her cosplay costume goes viral. This delicious romance deals with important topics like fatphobia, dyslexia and toxic families in ways that feel real and grounded but which do not damper the triumphant happiness of the ending.

I almost don’t know where to start with this review because Spoiler Alert was so brilliant but so full of layers and nuance, it’s hard to pinpoint which part was my absolute favorite. Maybe it’s best if we start with the two main characters, April and Marcus.

Heroine April Whittier is smart, witty, and has a secret hobby where she spends much of her free time writing fanfiction for the popular tv series, Gods of the Gates, based on a series of popular books. If this sounds familiar, it’s absolutely meant to be - the parallels between this made up show and another hugely popular tv show based on books is both amusing and pointed in its reference to how men devalue the idea of happiness and love in storytelling. April is also fat. It is a fact, it is never used pejoratively, but rather just as another descriptor, much like she has freckles or red hair. If you’ve read an Olivia Dade book, you know that she is masterful in writing fat representation. And while that holds true here, Olivia digs a little deeper into April’s psyche as a way to showcase why she might have trust issues. Her parents, the two people in the world who are meant to love her unconditionally, continually make her feel as less than, she’s been fat-shamed by previous dates and people she considered friends, and when she finally posts a picture on twitter of herself dressed as her favorite character from Gods of the Gates, malicious responses lay the groundwork for an unexpected romance with the unlikeliest of persons.

Marcus Caster-Rupp plays one half of the pairing that April ships on Gods of the Gates. When he comes upon a twitter thread where people are ridiculing April, he knows he must do something to help and so he publicly asks her out on a date. He too, knows what it is like to be judged based on your physical appearances. He has built an entire public persona as an incredibly handsome but dim person, as a result of many years spent being contemptuously overlooked by his own parents. These two characters may lead vastly different lives but it’s easy to see how often they have walked the same path of being dismissed and derided by those who are supposed to love and protect them. Unbeknownst to April, he’s also secretly her online best friend, a fanfiction writer who ships the same characters she does on Gods of the Gates. But while April has finally chosen to be open about her secret hobby, Marcus cannot for fear of losing his entire career and livelihood.

One of the clever things that Olivia does in this book are the “interstitials” between each chapter. Sometimes, they’re excerpts from the fanfiction stories April and Marcus write as their online counterparts, sometimes, they are the conversations that they have as their online counterparts, and on a few memorable occasions, they are excerpts from some of the ridiculous movies Marcus has done in the course of his career. It is an unique narrative choice that brings added depth and nuance to both these characters and their motivations and oftentimes, is used as a device to explain each of their actions to the other.

I have read multiple Olivia Dade books and loved them all but this legitimately feels like her best book to date. In the grand tradition of her books, it’s warm and soft and funny but with an added sharpness and depth that allows us to both know and love April and Marcus in all their complicated glory.

This book was fun, sweet and sexy. Full of fluff and angst, it was as good as the best fanfiction. I'm looking forward to Dade's new book next year!