A review by bzliz
Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade

lighthearted slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I had a bit of an Olivia Dade binge session in February but had a long wait to get to this one and honestly I’m not sure it was worth the wait. Maria and Peter have the same superficial charm that previous protagonists in the series also had but now that it’s the third installment of the series, it’s wearing thin (ironic). The whole thing feels a lot like a middling fanfiction. The characters flirt with having real personalities but so much of it is internal and huge understandings are gleaned from a glance or a one word sentence and I’m not entirely sure these people like each other despite what we’re being told. On top of that, it’s trying way too hard to be funny with repeated “jokes” that the readers are let in on but simply aren’t funny. 

The funniest part is the tags attached to the fanfiction interstitial that references not doing a lot of research about an aspect of Hollywood life because that feels like truth in fiction about how much research the actual author put in to learning about how filming works and what press junkets are really like. 

That said, if you just want to read a book about two fat actors falling in love and you don’t really care about how illogical a lot of the details are then you’ll probably love this. I’ll be taking a break from Olivia Dade for a while though. 
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