Spoiler Alert

"Honestly, if she hadn't begun to like him so much, she would find his excessive handsomeness extremely aggravating."

What it's about:
April is a plus-sized geologist who spends her spare time cosplaying, reading and writing fanfiction for her favourite book series turned TV series, ‘Gods of the Gates' (a thinly veiled ‘Game of Thrones' reference).

Marcus is the hunky lead actor in ‘Gods of the Gates' who to all the world appears to be a complete himbo. In his free time, he has taken to writing fanfiction to channel his frustrations with how the show-runners deviate from the source material and contradict characterisation. 

When Marcus is tagged in a Twitter thread of April's cosplay get-up by a man body shaming her, Marcus comes to her public defence and invites her on a date in an attempt to prove to the trolls and haters that April is not unattractive. Here, Marcus discovers April's fanfic penname and realises that she is his anonymous fandom bestie and beta-reader. Of course, instead of confessing his secret fandom identity to her he conceals it but continues to date her, giving us one of the main conflicts of the novel.

Themes present in this story include:

• Marcus feels stifled by his public persona but afraid to let the real him show
• Body-shaming and body-positivity, April's past experiences dating as a fat woman and her insecurities and fatphobia within fandom
• Toxic parenting and strained parent/child relations - Marcus' parents are snobby & pretentious, ashamed of his lack of academic achievement and dyslexia; April's father is embarrassed by her size and her mother constantly undermines April and body-shames her
• Dual POV from both Marcus and April
• Marcus concealing their previous connection from April while pursuing a relationship with her

“I'm not looking to be fixed. I want to be loved and liked and desired not because of my size, not despite my size, but because I'm ME. My character, my choices, my words.”

What I thought:

• My first time reading a book by Olivia Dade and I enjoyed it enough that I now have most of the other things she's written on my wishlist!
• There were fanfic self-insert vibes, but I felt it was a well-written one and, perhaps due to being a lover of fanfic, I didn't mind it.
• I related to April's insecurities regarding letting the nerdier aspects of her personality and interests show at work and other non-fandom places.
• I was glad that Marcus was called out on how unfair and uneven his knowing April's online persona and their prior friendship and keeping this from her was, this wasn't glossed over and was treated as the massive betrayal and manipulation it absolutely is.
• Enjoyed the supporting cast of characters, although I do agree with previous reviewers that an actor in a major franchise happily admitting he writes pegging fanfic about said franchise (Marcus' colleague who jumps into the fanfic scene after Marcus confides in him) requires some suspension of disbelief because it does seem very unlikely!
• The Red Riding Hood role-play was seriously cringe and unsexy, glad that ended there!

“If those lines in the script contradicted seasons' worth of character development, not to mention the books that had inspired the series, he wouldn't dwell on that. Not now.”