emilyllebron 's review for:

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

2.5

lighthearted fast-paced

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I had to ponder over this one for a bit and finally landed on a solid 2.5. 

Pros: It’s refreshing to have a confident, fat, female main character get the “hot” actor guy without making her “fatness” the only sole quality about her. I think often times plus-size characters lack depth and dimension, but we got more of April so I appreciated that. Honestly that type of representation is important so for that alone it gets a few stars. ((Not to say April didn’t get on my nerves, but I’d rather take an annoying character than one with the personality of a wet sock.)) There were also some touching moments of representation for other types of characters as well so I appreciated that (even if it all felt far fetched at times).

This also was a nice, quick easy read that helped me regain some happiness after diving into A Little Life so props to them.

Cons: I had a hard time believing the “believability” of this story. I’m not sure if it has to do with my unfamiliarity of the fanfic world, or if it’s just because I cannot wrap my head around a guy like Marcus (dyslexic golden retriever famous actor turned secret writer) ever feeling the need to defend a random fat woman’s honor on twitter. Maybe I’m just a pessimist in that sense but the overall set-up just bothered me. I think a more organic meeting (even by chance) would have been more believable over a viral tweet turning into a date.

There were also some major plot holes or other things added that just felt rushed and not wrapped up nicely. 

Lastly, I just couldn’t get over the random fanfic and movie scripts added in at the end of every chapter. There was maybe one that shed some actual insight to their character’s real life, but overall it just felt weird. Again - could totally be because I’m not familiar with that type of writing.

Overall: read it if you want to hit your yearly goal and need something easy to follow and want to see some positive fat female representation - don’t expect anything groundbreaking though.