Spoiler Alert
Olivia Dade
It’s a phrase I hear and use a lot as a librarian — “representation matters” — but it’s not one I ever thought I needed until I picked up this book. If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you’ve seen my passion for romance novels deepen in the last year or so as they’ve been a great comfort to me during COVID-19. Most of the protagonists of those novels, despite being mostly #ownvoices, are your typical thin able bodied protagonist (shout out to Talia Hibbert though for bucking those norms!). In Spoiler Alert, April Whittier is fat and Olivia Dade wants to make sure the reader knows about it.
As a small fat, not to mention a ginger like April, I cannot begin to tell you the amount of times I have experienced the fears, and the insecurities that April does — and she’s already put in so much work, like I have. But we live in a fat phobic culture, and sometimes… sometimes we just need someone else to show those insecure voices in our heads how wrong they are indeed. Enter Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert.
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.
Goodreads Blurb
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?
From the dedication page, I knew this book was for me. I also knew that this book, due to society’s culture of hating all things fat, will not be for everyone. I even found myself battling some internalized stuff here and there as I read. I will also say that this novel is more romance than it is steamy smut, and I was disappointed in that honestly, but I understand how the escapism is still relevant and appealing.
April is a fully fleshed out character, though prone to doing a lot of emotional labor and “digging” on behalf of Marcus in the beginning since he’s only putting up a facade when they first meet. Her internal struggles with society accepting her will offer a wonderful mirror or window to any reader; because do not be mistaken — April Whittier has accepted herself in all her glory. It’s the rest of the world that needs to get with the program of learning that size =/= health.
I initially read Marcus to be as shallow as the persona he put on, even in the scenes when Dade is attempting her best to give him depth. It wasn’t until more about his backstory came to be revealed that I saw him as a complete character. There were also confusing moments of back story snippets with April’s character as well, but the set up and delivery of the premise was executed flawlessly and believably.
Their romance, because it is decidedly more than just a sexual attraction, is fraught with miscommunication, an altogether realistic portrayal of a contemporary relationship. I found myself wishing from time to time that instead of falling into those situations, despite both characters being well-intentioned, they spoke more on their hurts. This is a very heavy internal dialogue book, and I wished for more banter at times.
The sex, similar to Well Met, was written in one chapter, but thankfully felt plausible. Most of the book is dedicated to their relationship as a whole. I’m a bigger fan of slow burn tension building when it comes to romance, and while Dade did a fantastic job of building that up in the beginning, after that chapter, there were many more fade to black scenes than I was hoping for in an adult romance novel.
Side characters in this novel didn’t get much of a chance to come across as fully developed despite a quite strong inkling that the next book will be about Alex and Lauren (and the excerpt at the end of Spoiler Alert confirmed it!). I also found that this book held lots of appeal to readers familiar with fanfiction, with heavy references to AO3 — Archive of Our Own for the unknowing. For readers unversed in fanfiction, or absent from it for a while (like me), the meta commentary was still funny and enjoyable.
I did deviate a lot with my feelings on the ending/climax of the book. Without giving spoilers, I will say that I went through a similar situation and would not have made the choices April did, and I think there might have been a way to tell the story so that it didn’t hinge on that one plot point.
Overall, I found the book to be enjoyable and I finished it in almost one sitting! I hope more people pick up this book and add it to their TBR pile, because this is written by someone who clearly gets it when it comes to the worries and experiences of fat people.
The Little Book Witch 
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