Spoiler alert: This is one of the most well done fandom books that I’ve read in awhile.

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade follows April, a fan-fiction writer of a popular Greek-inspired show, who goes on a date with the leading actor, Marcus Castor-Rupp, after a tweet of her cosplay goes viral. While April and Marcus grow closer, Marcus harbors a secret that could ruin their relationship and his reputation. Marcus, like April, writes fan fiction that slams the television show that he stars in and his online persona regularly interacts with April, but she doesn’t know it.

I have read several books that involve fandom and they usually fall short for me. In most of the books, the main character harbors an unhealthy obsession with whatever book, show, or movie that they enjoy. This could include dehumanize actors in the show or using unsafe methods to find their haters in real life among many other unhealthy depictions. While fandoms can, and often do, have a dark side, I find that the positive side of fandoms are rarely featured.

Fortunately for me, this book takes an opposite approach, which was one of the aspects that I enjoyed most in this novel. While there some aspects of this book that did fall flat for me, I overall enjoyed my reading experience and I think this book has many elements that will appeal to many different readers.

As I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite parts of this book was April’s involvement in her fandom. In all of April’s interactions, she never dehumanizes the actors on her favorite shows and delivers thoughtful criticisms on the shows problematic elements. For example, when April goes on her initial date with Marcus, she is open and upfront about the fan fiction that she writes. Additionally, after she meets him in person, she changes the way that she describes the appearance of his character in her work, because after interacting with him personally, she doesn’t want it to seem like she is inserting him instead of the character into her work.

Another aspect of this book that I enjoyed was the body positivity in this book. April is plus-size and receives a lot of hateful comments after her date with Marcus. However, April always stands up for herself and sets clear expectations for how she should be treated. I appreciated how this extended to her fandom as well. April feels connected to Lavinia, her favorite character from the show, who is often put down for her appearance. A lot of times in books with fandoms, I don’t understand why the main character is so attached to a book, show, or movie. However, in this book, the connection is clear and meaningful.

I also enjoyed the background that readers receive on April and Marcus, especially regarding their parents and childhood. While April was belittled by her parents for her appearance, Marcus was treated as unintelligent by his parents because he had dyslexia. As the book goes on, April and Marcus begin to set clear boundaries with their parents of what they will and will not tolerate. I don’t often see this in adult books, but it is very much part of the adult experience, so I appreciated its inclusion within this novel.

While I did enjoy aspects of this novel, there were some issues that impacted my reading experience. For me, this book moved extremely slow. I found myself putting this book down and picking it up multiple times because some of the scenes seemed to drag on way too long. Additionally, I found many of the scenes and interactions in this book extremely repetitive, so it felt like it took awhile for the story to progress. When the story finally seemed to get moving, the ending was wrapped up quickly and abruptly. Additionally, I found too much of the end to be focused on a different character, who I imagine to have their own spin-off, which has been one of my pet peeves this year in adult romance books bound to become companion series.

Overall, Spoiler Alert is a fun book with a good message and a positive depiction of fan culture. I give this book three out of three stars.

A romance centered around fanfic with a fat female lead- yes please!

April Whittier is a popular fanfic author in the Gods of the Gates fandom (a GoT look-a-like), but she keeps her personal and fandom lives completely separate due to her job. That separation quickly explodes after she decides to post a cosplay photo of herself as Lavinia, one of the show's leads, on Twitter which catches the attention of fat-shaming trolls and Marcus Caster-Rupp, one of the show's stars, who decides to ask her out to spite the jerks. Marcus plays a brain dead pretty boy in real life but is secretly Book!AeneasWouldNever, another popular fanfic author in the fandom, something that is completely against his contract. Soon after meeting, Marcus learns that April is Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his fandom friend, but is too worried about potential consequences to say anything about the connection even as they grow closer until he's in too deep with a secret he doesn't know how to share. April and Marcus both have to work through insecurities as they develop together, and I really appreciated that April's issues weren't all weight related (a nice change from other books featuring a plus-sized lead).

I really liked Marcus and April and how they interacted, but a big secret in a relationship is one of my least favorite plot devices, so that definitely frustrated me throughout the story. Marcus' cast mates were amazing, especially Alex, who I just learned is getting his own book (yay!!).

Overall, Spoiler Alert is a super cute and sweet romance, and I highly recommend it.

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade is a love letter: a love letter to the fanfiction writers; to the people who don't fit society's ideals; to the outsiders who are struggling to be themselves. This is a story about self-acceptance and the often-bumpy road you have to travel to discover it.

April writes fanfiction for an immensely popular TV series; one day, she takes a leap and posts a picture of herself dressed up as one of the characters. The problem? She's a bigger girl, and the internet critics won't let her forget it. Enter Marcus, one of the stars of the TV series and a man who is also often judged by skin-deep standards. Marcus asks April out, and loves who she is both inside and out. Marcus can also be his real self around April, not the public figure he often portrays. But when April realizes that Marcus has been keeping a huge secret from her, will their love and acceptance of each other be strong enough to bring them back together or is their romance destined to be shorter than the one-shot fanfics that April writes?

I really enjoyed Spoiler Alert. I loved how open and honest it was about body shaming, all without once calling April "plus size." Dade touched on many sensitive topics, including fat shaming and learning disabilities and addressed them with delicacy and poise through her characters. Neither April nor Marcus dismissed the other one's issues and, when it mattered most, supported each other through the tough decisions that we often don't want to handle on our own.

Dade's writing was sharp, the characters at times painfully real, and the ending everything you could want. I can't wait to read the next book in this series.

I inhaled this book in two days. The book was sweet, the characters were flawed but lovable and the depiction of the world of fandom was endearing and accurate. Our two main characters know each other online but not in real life. Marcus is a famous television star who keeps his online fandom persona a secret and April is a geologist and fangirl of the show Marcus stars in. When they meet, sparks fly.

April is a fat woman who is happy with her body. There is some conflict around this topic, but it’s handled very well. It warmed my heart to read a romance with a main character who looks like me and who is comfortable with herself and who is found attractive by a partner. Books like this are few and far between.

I usually read historical romance, but this contemporary rom-com about an actor Marcus asking out fan April who's secretly his online fan fiction buddy caught my eye. Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt, but they both have personal and family baggage that they have to overcome.

It took me a while to get into this book, as it felt like it's own fan fiction as a novel. There were a lot of clichés, and I didn't really like the "online" inserts between every chapter. In the end, it was entertaining, and I'm left wondering about Alex and Lauren (who are starring in the next book).

had a lot of great elements, and was great to read a book about adult cosplayers. However, this book started with bold ideas that quickly fell into heavy tropes, and it bogged the book down at parts. Yes, the character is "overwight" but instead of bringing in a woman who embraces, it became all she herself could focus on, as though it's impossible to be fat AND happy. Also, this belief that coworkers and employers would fire and/or shun her if they ever knew about her cosplay and fanatic, felt dated.

However, there are many great elements to the book that persevere, like great banter interesting characters, and an overall decent story.

A global hit of a TV show. A Lavina/Aeneas fan-server. An actor who never stops playing a role. A cosplaying, fanfic-writing geologist. A whole lot of smutty and angsty fanfic. And a tweet that went viral...

For the last seven years, Marcus Caster-Rupp has played Aeneas on the hit television show, Gods of the Gates. But now the series is wrapping it's final season and Marcus is at a lost as to what to do next with his career. Mostly, because he's been playing two roles for the last seven years: Aeneas, and Well-Groomed Golden Retriever, dumb but handsome and talented. He feels like he can only be his true self when he's writing fanfiction under the moniker Book!AeneasWouldNever, and talking with his best friend and beta reader, Unapologetic Lavina Stan. Too bad they can never meet. After all, it would end his career if it was found out that he was writing fanfiction--and a whole lot of it being Fix-It Fics...

When Unapologetic Lavina Stan, AKA April Whittier, decides to get brave and post a picture of her cosplay-in-progress, she was not expecting her Tweet to go viral. But it does, for all the wrong reasons. Immediately, April's picture gets cruel, fat-shaming responses, some of which tag the show's star, calling on him to further ridicule April. However, to April's surprise, Marcus not only gets up and arms, slaying the trolls on the internet as easily as he does the enemy on TV, but he does the unthinkable. The thing many a fangirl has dreamed about.

Marcus asks April out on a date.

And she says YES. (And the fangirls rejoiced!)

What should be just a one-time thing that is half-publicity stunt, half-real blind date should stay a one-time thing. That is, until Marcus learns that April is, in fact, Unapologetic Lavina Stan. His beta reader. His best friend.

His One True Love?

"Spoiler Alert" is not only a fantastic romance, it is also a delightful tribute to fandom and all of the good, bad and ugly that comes with it. Adult women in particular play a large role in fandom, and can be overlooked. Or, as April did early on in the book, hesitate to share their fandom interests for professional reasons and social expectations, instead treating fandom as something secret and almost shameful. In this case, it was amazing to see an adult man represented as well, especially in shipping and fanfiction circles. In that matter, it was nice to see the two different writing styles and preferences of April and Marcus and the broad scope of fanfiction. More importantly, that fanfiction comes from people writing what they want to see.

With the romance aspects of this novel, everything felt incredibly real. The awkwardness of getting to know someone, making clumsy mistakes, accidentally hurting or misreading your partner, etc. April and Marcus have the unusual aspect of paparazzi finding them on their dates, but they often treat it as an adventure more than an inconvenience. Seriously, though, it's so cute how much they love each other. Cute, but echoing of a very much IRL relationship.

Now that I've been "spoiled" by "Spoiler Alert", now all I can do now is wait with eager anticipation for the next book, focusing on Marcus' best friend Alex and his "minder", Lauren!

The first chapter of this book felt promising and I hovered at about 4 stars through the first few chapters, but it took an immediate, sustained nose dive into a fiery, 1-star crash.
Based on the art of the cover and the synopsis, I was expecting a cute, funny, body-positive romance with winks about fan culture (I, also, have an AO3 account and know what OTP means), and a story with genuine heart. Don't judge a book by its cover, right?
Instead, this was barely concealed modern AU fanfiction of a REAL PERSON! NC-W is so transparently the object of this self-insert fic that it made me cringe--the author even posts about him on Twitter and the parallels between Marcus and NC-W/Jaime are overly obvious. There's nothing wrong with writing fanfiction about a real person (in theory, I suppose), but it needs some transformation to become a novel about fanfiction. Where does the fanfiction end and the story begin? This feels like a book for Braime/NC-W fans, and not a book for "fans"--I was someone who was growing up as the LotR movies were coming out, and I was a hardcore Legolas/Orlando Bloom fan (yes, I had the cardboard cutout, yes I had a Mrs. Bloom tshirt, YES I refreshed the lotr.net homepage until Orlando Bloom said "hello this is Orlando Bloom, welcome to Lord of the Rings dot net") and it didn't resonate with me the way other books about fanfiction/fandoms do.
The characters are essentially the same person--holding onto childhood and adolescent trauma inflicted by their parents, unable to communicate their feelings and needs, parroting self-deprecating Internet politics about saying the right things. Neither of these adults are ready to date. The amount of sobby "betrayal" is juvenile and honestly borderlines on emotional abuse. Pause on some of the scenes with tension (the gym/buffet catastrophe, the birthday lunch with April's parents), and think about how they'd come across if the genders were reversed.
Yes, the emotions and the experiences are real. This had a honest portrayal of what it's like to be fat, in real life, in fandoms. And what I assume is an honest portrayal of having a learning disability in a literature-obsessed family. Those aren't bad things, and definitely have a place in our writings about fandom. But this is just wish-fulfillment, without the self-awareness that could have elevated it to a novel that invokes empathy.

I am genuinely confused by the number of 4/5 star reviews of this book! Guys, it was not good. You can't write real person/self insert/AU fanfiction and call it a novel. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a real person! He doesn't deserve this.

Plus size representation in contemporary romance novels is a good thing, but come on-- there is more emotional depth in Taylor Swift songs. These characters simply had no personality. April was ~fat and liked fanfiction, that is it. She is a nearly 40 year old woman who is ~~~hiding the most important part of herself, which is apparently an obsession with a GoT like show. Marcus, also 40 human years old!!, is the most sensitive of sensitive people hiding dyslexia ?? and the secret shame of being a hot smart person ?? and his family hating him because they know _latin_ and his show is an abomination to the canon. And he writes fanfiction too in his spare time about his own show and about his own coworkers which is deeply damned weird. He uses words like "modern AU" in real life. And speaks and thinks like he was written by a woman who was very into tumblr at one point in her life.

The author sort of _tried_ it with the geologist angle with April but it went entirely no where added absolutely nothing to the plot except the one time at the museum she was talking about rocks and Marcus got horny. Strong Fat Woman in STEM! but there was absolutely no substance to it. Purely for the internet woke points. She could have been anything and it would have produced the exact same results.

Guys, the sex scenes. I _like_ sex scenes in my romance books. I am mad when they fade to black. But holy smokes absolutely no. For someone who has such hang ups about her body, April sure was quick to hop into bed with him-- the 3rd """date"""? with a allegedly super hot celebrity? sure jan.
It might have worked if they had an ounce of chemistry but alas. Instead it was just DEEPLY uncomfortable and entirely not-sexy to read. Like, squirm away and throw your tablet away not-sexy. If anyone in human existence described me as tasting ~earthy~ I would happily murder them and hide their body under the floorboards. And lord, the author described every bit of April as "round". Her round thighs, her round belly and her round heavy breasts. Please s t o p. She has to have more physical qualities besides being round with red hair.

I'm truly not convinced a celebrity would be fired and ostracized from the acting world for writing fanfiction. Mostly because I don't believe a celebrity would be actually write fanfiction about their own show in real life. And his friend announcing to the world he writes pegging fanfiction-- there are no words about how dumb and unlikely that is.

Listen guys, Fangirl was twee sometimes but it had great characters and plot and heart behind it. This did not. This should have stayed on AO3 where it belongs and where no one else would have to read it.
This made me want to throw myself and my tablet into the sea and possibly give up literacy for life.

Positives: the book cover was cute.
Negatives: literally everything else.

Spoiler Alert checks all the boxes! Steamy romance, fat positivity, women in STEM, fan fiction, and a successful leading man with a learning disability. This book is perfect for Game of Thrones enthusiasts and grown-up fans of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl.
April and is living every person's dream. A chance to go one a date with the star of both her favorite tv show, and the fan fiction she writes. What seems like a real life fantasy ends up messier then any fic she's ever written.
The most refreshing aspect of this story was how the author described April's body. Olivia Dade didn't play around with fluffy language. April was not "curvy" or "ample"...she was fat! Fat and successful. Fat and beautiful. Fat and deserving of all the love and romance Marcus had to give.

I've had to sit with this one a bit to land on my final thoughts/feelings.

Spoiler Alert is an atypical romance novel whose main characters are plus size (April) and dyslexic (Marcus) who also both write fanfic of their favorite TV show, Gods of the Gates,on which Marcus is the actor that plays the main character, Aeneas, on the show. April is a superfan/cosplayer of Aeneas' love interest, Lavinia.

Are you following me so far?

Let's add another layer of complexity- they each have three identities in this book! They have their online personas as fan-fic writers, character alignment (actor/cosplayer), as well as their real-life identities. Except Marcus also has a personality for the public separate from the private one we get to see while reading.

One day, at the prompting of a Gods of the Gates Twitter request for fans to post their best cosplay outfits of the show's characters, April bravely posts her own photo in her Lavinia cosplay outfit. The Twitter trolls came out... and then Marcus, in a surprise move, compliments April's photo and asks her to dinner.

He takes her out to dinner AND....

...that's about as much as I can tell you without spoiling anything. :)

Overall, I found this novel entertaining and unique. It's not every day that you find a new age romance book that features modern day nerds living with real life issues.

The romance scenes in this are STEAMY AF. Guys, I was reading this in a car trip and was blushing. And you know me, it takes a lot for romance books to make me blush but DANG OLIVIA DADE I SEE YOU!!!!

I finished this book about 2 weeks ago, and if I'm still thinking about it then I know it deserves a solid rating. I would recommend this in a heartbeat if you are looking for a romance book that is different from all the rest.

I loved this! It's such a treat to have a book really get into the reality of fandom and all the nerdy things that people do. I love the concept of making writing fan fic be cool and be sexy and exciting like this book does. It was so good, and I love how the real issue of body shamming comes into play because it shows that people are not their weight and should not be judged for it. They can be cool, sexy, and loved like any one else, pounds be damned.

This was so fun and definitely for fans of "Fan Girl" by Rainbow Rowell. It was the romance I needed with the fan fiction I needed. It was so fun and I can't wait to see people eat this up!

Too much focus on weight and fat shaming. I tried to like this book, but it lost me partway through, so I skipped to the end to see if it got any better. It didn't.

I love Olivia Dade so much (Teach Me is soooo good) and was excited to get this RA. I love how her romances deal with real issues in such a mature way, and her heros are always the best feminists! Crossing my fingers for Alex and Lauren's story next!

I am always a sucker for a story where the world's most beautiful man falls for a girl who wouldn't even get close to that list. Not that April isn't beautiful - but she is curvy and not the woman you would typically see on the arm of a Hollywood movie star. She is a geologist who writes fan fiction about her favorite television and book series. For a long time she has kept her two lives totally separate because she feared the reaction she might get when she showed her true interests more publicly. She also kept her twitter handle a secret from her FanFiction friends because she was afraid they'd be unkind to her about her size. But with a change in her job, she is determined to move forward and be true to herself and stand up for herself.

April posts a picture of herself on Twitter in a CosPlay outfit and immediately gets a lot of negative comments and attention. One person tags the star of the tv show Marcus Caster-Rupp in an attempt to shame April, but Marcus surprises everyone by asking April out to dinner. Marcus is gorgeous and has crafted a persona of being fairly dim and very vain. In reality he is shy, dyslexic, very smart, and a closet fanfic writer who has been corresponding with April for months. No one knows about either of his secrets - although many people have guessed that he isn't quite the village idiot he likes to portray.

Marcus falls quickly and hard for April - but is terrified to share his whole self with her. He, like April, has parents who treated him terribly. He's at first afraid of her sharing his secret identity as a fanfic writer because of his career, but as he comes to know April better - he is terrified of losing her because of the same. '

Throughout the book all of Marcus and April's actions are colored by their past experience. Sometimes for the good - but usually not. The book spends a fair amount of time with them learning to communicate better with each other and working through things in ways that really make sense. I loved that Marcus, despite being a hollywood star, is the opposite of toxic masculinity. I also loved April's quirkiness and confidence.

There are parts of this book that are absolutely hilarious - I think half of my highlights came from true laugh-out-loud moments. Marcus's best friend Alex is just hysterical and I can't wait to read more about him in the next book in the series.

The only thing that kept this from being a four star read for me was knowing the confrontation between April and Marcus was coming and just wanting it to go differently. As much as a liked the book, I did consider putting it down several times because I just cringed at the choice Marcus was making. But overall - the book is a star and a great read.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley, but these opinions are all my own.

April is a geologist by day and a fanfic writer by night-- until she gets a new job where she feels more comfortable sharing her Gods of the Gates stanning. And she makes that entrance with a bang: sharing her Lavinia cosplay on Twitter. But the trolls are fierce, mocking her weight and appearance. But then a knight with a blue verification check saves the day: Marcus Caster-Rupp, male lead of God of the Gates tv adaptation (think Game of Thrones level fame), asks her out. What initially starts as Marcus being nice to a fan quickly turns into a real relationship. And while April quickly digs (ha) beneath Marcus's golden retriever public persona, Marcus doesn't let her see his true-true side: he is her years-long, fanfic-writing, beta-reading, fan community friend Book!AeneasWouldNever. So, while Marcus lets April know he loves her body just the way it is, he doesn't reciprocate all the vulnerability-sharing. Can their relationship survive when the truth comes out?

4.5/5 stars-- I have to knock off 1/2 of a star because there is too much sex. It's fluffy, beautiful, swoony sex, but for this asexual (who loves steamy romance titles), apparently there is such a thing as too much sex in a romance. Now, I understand that Marcus worshipping April's body is important for April's relationship with her weight and her confidence regarding her weight and appearance. And I understand that Marcus's relationship with his body comes from a very different place: he views his body as a tool for his job. As such, I completely understand /why/ there is as much sex in this story as there is. (Plus, the fact that it mirrors AO3 so much adds to the "necessity" for lots of smut-- it adds verisimilitude.) It just... made me uncomfortable sometimes, and I had to put the book away for the day at those moments and pick back up again later.

HOWEVER, the attention to emotions, especially on Marcus's POV, makes this book so delectable. Usually I don't like male protagonists in romances to be /this/ precisely attuned (because it seems inauthentic to most men and their (non-)verbalization proclivities), but I think Marcus's attachment A) to his portrayal of Aeneas for so many years and B) to writing non-smutty fanfic makes his attention to emotions (his own and April's) authentic.

Lastly, I loved this book because of what it does for body positivity, specifically in regards to fatness and appearance. The way April worries, "talks" to herself to hyper herself up or to calm herself down, in how to talk to her well-meaning-but-hurtful mom, etc. is so authentic to what it's like to be a plus-sized woman today. THIS is what real body positivity looks like in a story. Others authors: take note, please!

TL;DR: Read this steamy romance. It's like fanfic: shipping, smut, emotions, and some angst. But like good fanfic, it's got heart and is intelligent. Also: body positivity!

Spoiler Alert is the story of two friends who share a passion for fanfiction. Gods of the Gates is the biggest show on television, based on an incomplete series of beloved books, and April and Marcus both write fics online. Both keep their fanfiction intentionally separate from their real lives, for very different reasons.

April is a scientist finally moving into the public sector, and able to bring her passion for the fantasy world to her personal web presence. Finally, she doesn’t have to worry about trying to get individual jobs and can post her cosplay pictures.

Marcus is an actor- one of the stars of the Gods at the Gates TV show, and sick of seeing the books he loves destroyed by the show creators. His fanfiction helps him soothe his anger at the butchering of his character, and the coming end of the show, which promises outrage from fans. If his fics were to be discovered, his career would be over, and he would be sued to oblivion. Marcus and April read and edit each others’ fics, and have been friends online for years, when twitter brings them together, entirely by accident.

April and Marcus have distinct character voices, and nuanced inner lives. Both of them are real adults in their late thirties, not post-adolescents mired in indecision. April is an amazing, intelligent fat woman who knows that the world will only ever see her as the latter. She knows she is beautiful, and does not apologize for the way she looks. She faces her personal challenges with aplomb, and doesn’t allow people to treat her poorly. Her strength is one of her best qualities, and watching her shine is a delight.

Marcus has found that the best way to be in the public eye is to present himself as an empty-headed jock, a pretty boy who can act but doesn’t have much between his ears. He faces the difficult choice about whether to open up, or keep his real self inside. Marcus has always felt like a disappointment to the people closest to him, and if he wants a chance with April, he has to let go of that fear. Marcus is a hugely likable, fun guy who knows who he is, but isn’t sure if anyone else should be let in on the secret.

April and Marcus have crazy chemistry, this book is sexy, funny, sweet, and incredibly passionate. The secondary characters are just as interesting as April and Marcus, and add hilarity to a book that already has snappy writing and amazing dialogue. April is intensely relatable, with a voice TV fans and book-lovers will both fall for. Gods at the Gates is also a very thinly analog for Game of Thrones, the last season that launches a thousand angry tweets. The criticism of the TV adaptation rings true, and adds a bit of extra humor to this already funny book. This book is an exciting new read, and one hopes it is a sign of even bigger things to come from Olivia Dade.

Spoiler Alert will be published October 6, 2020 by HarperCollins. You can preorder it wherever books are sold.

Do you enjoy fandoms? Have you ever read a fanfic? Do you ever fantasize about the beautiful people of your favorite tv show? Then this one is for you. It is fun, but it also has a lot of heart and both of the main characters have depth. I haven't checked yet, but I do hope there will be another book about Alex as he is a delightful side-character. The structure is interesting, in that there are frequent breaks where the reader can read chat messages or parts of a fanfic or a film script. I thought it was interesting, though perhaps there were a few more than I really needed. Your mileage may vary as to your enjoyment of this type of literary device. I wasn't sure I would like this, but I did and it is much more than "fluff". It also gets into it about crappy families and discusses fatshaming. If you are a little bit nerd, then this is for you.

Olivia knocks yet another Romance out of the park. I adored this book- preordered it for my shelves right after I closed my kindle. The whole entire fanfiction/cosplay/secret online identity is my jam. I read it so fast and then was so sorry that it was over. Five Stars!!