Review: Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)

Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)
By Olivia Dade

Published By: Piatkus
Publication Date: October 6, 2020
Date Read: February 22, 2024
Genre: Adult – Contemporary Romance
Source: Bought
Format: Hardback
Pages: 403

From Goodreads:
Olivia Dade bursts onto the scene in this delightfully fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction, in which a devoted fan goes on an unexpected date with her celebrity crush, who’s secretly posting fanfiction of his own. 

Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he’s known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster.  Marcus is able to get out his own frustrations with his character through his stories, especially the ones that feature the internet’s favorite couple to ship, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone ever found out about his online persona, he’d be fired. Immediately.

April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. When she decides to post her latest Lavinia creation on Twitter, her photo goes viral. Trolls and supporters alike are commenting on her plus-size take, but when Marcus, one half of her OTP, sees her pic and asks her out on a date to spite her critics, she realizes life is really stranger than fanfiction.

Even though their first date is a disaster, Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. And when he discovers she’s actually Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to hide 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?

Spoiler Alert is a book that has been on my radar for a while but I had never really picked it up. I read Olivia Dade’s set of two novellas last year, and while I enjoyed them, they didn’t blow me away and make me want to immediately pick up her full length novels. Fast forward to this year when Spoiler Alert was picked as the February pick for my book club. I was so wrong for not wanting to read this sooner as this was absolutely fantastic. I am officially an Olivia Dade fangirl after this fantastic book.

Spoiler Alert is so fantastic for so many reasons. Firstly, I loved that the characters were older than is typically done in romcom type books. Our lead heroine is 36 and our lead hero 39. This was just amazing to me. As someone in her 30s myself, I loved that I could really identify with characters at this age who didn’t have everything together. I always feel like in romcoms the characters are always early to mid 20s and end up finding their HEA and have everything together by the end of the book… and it’s cute and fun but so unrealistic. I really enjoyed seeing people in their late 30s still not have their shit together. It was refreshing.

Another thing I loved about this book is the fact that April is plus size. Now, I have read many books with ‘curvy’ and plus size characters but for me this one was special. It really did a fantastic job of talking about the trauma that can come with being plus size in today’s world and online community. I particularly loved the fact that Olivia really challenged ‘fatphobic’ comments and behaviour that people may not necessarily believe are being fatphobic. I remember one scene in particular that truly sticks in my mind because the slimmer character makes a comment about food that is not intended as a dig at the character, but she does interpret it like that. It really made me think about how we can always be good intentioned and still not realise how those words can be interpreted differently by people. I think it’s just a really good message and lesson for everyone to be mindful about what we say and how others can interpret those words differently to how they are intended.

I honestly loved everything about this book. The characters were fantastic and I just adored that it really focused on this ‘fangirl’ kind of behaviour. I am someone who absolutely fangirls over characters, and while I personally don’t write fanfic, there are so many people who do and I loved that it focused on that. It was cute and fun and I truly just loved every moment. I can’t wait to read the other books in the series and I am a definite Olivia Dade fan from here on out. If you love romcoms, this is one you definitely can’t miss. It is so heartfelt and real… and utterly hilarious all at the same time.