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readingwithcatherine 's review for:
Spoiler Alert
by Olivia Dade
Okay. I tried reading this book previously this year and stopped. I liked the premise a lot. It was a fun parallel with the GOT show and their actors. But it got slow for me. I decided to pick it back up because a friend really enjoyed it. So I finished it this time, but here's my take.
As a plus-sized woman (also one that's a scientist, highly relatable to the April character) reading this romance, I took big issue with 1. April's very still packed baggage about her body and 2. The author's use of descriptive words.
April as a character is extremely sensitive about anything that could even be in a neighboring state of ridicule about her body. The author gives her a backstory that makes sense to justify this, but she is so far from being okay with herself in this novel. She is triggered by people talking about healthy food, working out, turning lights off, and other mundane things that are just going to occur around her. She eventually shows enough growth to be able to admit these things are triggering her, but that's where the growth stops. She is so so SO far from body acceptance that it hurt me as a reader. Maybe she'll grow? But we won't know because the book ended.
I never want to read the word ROUND again in my life. I want someone with the ebook version of this to do a word count for how many times the author used ROUND to describe the body of a fat woman. Round is a shape, not a descriptor of someone's body (at least not 50+ times). If I was looking for directions on how to draw April (OR Lauren, another fat female character in the story described as ROUND) as a cartoon character, this would have been very instructive. But I'm trying to picture her. Is she made of spheres??? The drawing on the cover did more for my imagination than any of the words written in this book. Round isn't insulting and doesn't have a negative connotation, but it's not how I would want to be described by a partner either. It's neutral at best. Not to mention her breasts being described as "heavy" and her vagina as EARTHY for God's sake. Just because the woman works in soil science doesn't mean she is made of dirt. This quality of writing issue lowered it an entire star for me. I don't know if I'll read the sequel, even though I'm sure it'll be entertaining, because I cannot listen to how ROUND Lauren is
As a plus-sized woman (also one that's a scientist, highly relatable to the April character) reading this romance, I took big issue with 1. April's very still packed baggage about her body and 2. The author's use of descriptive words.
April as a character is extremely sensitive about anything that could even be in a neighboring state of ridicule about her body. The author gives her a backstory that makes sense to justify this, but she is so far from being okay with herself in this novel. She is triggered by people talking about healthy food, working out, turning lights off, and other mundane things that are just going to occur around her. She eventually shows enough growth to be able to admit these things are triggering her, but that's where the growth stops. She is so so SO far from body acceptance that it hurt me as a reader. Maybe she'll grow? But we won't know because the book ended.
I never want to read the word ROUND again in my life. I want someone with the ebook version of this to do a word count for how many times the author used ROUND to describe the body of a fat woman. Round is a shape, not a descriptor of someone's body (at least not 50+ times). If I was looking for directions on how to draw April (OR Lauren, another fat female character in the story described as ROUND) as a cartoon character, this would have been very instructive. But I'm trying to picture her. Is she made of spheres??? The drawing on the cover did more for my imagination than any of the words written in this book. Round isn't insulting and doesn't have a negative connotation, but it's not how I would want to be described by a partner either. It's neutral at best. Not to mention her breasts being described as "heavy" and her vagina as EARTHY for God's sake. Just because the woman works in soil science doesn't mean she is made of dirt. This quality of writing issue lowered it an entire star for me. I don't know if I'll read the sequel, even though I'm sure it'll be entertaining, because I cannot listen to how ROUND Lauren is