Review: Spoiler Alert: a delightfully fun romantic comedy

Spoiler Alert: a delightfully fun romantic comedy by Olivia Dade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

What happens when an internationally renowned actor in a long-running series called Gods of the Gates, loosely based on the books by E. Wade (sadly not a real thing, I googled) which were themselves based on The Aeneid, rescues a fan who is abused for her physical appearance on Twitter? Itself very similar in storyline, Marcus is a beautiful man, physically fit (as you would need to be to play the Trojan hero Aeneas) whereas April, an environmental geologist, is, as she herself says, fat, with no intention of dieting or exercising. However, they both share a secret. They both love to write Fanfic about Gods of the Gates and over the last two years their alter-egos BAWN and Ulsie (they both stand for longer names but, phsaw) have become very close. However, Marcus' alter-ego BAWN is highly critical of the way in which the showrunners have taken the latest series and it could ruin his career if anyone ever discovered his true identity. April too feels her professional reputation would suffer if her colleagues in her physically demanding and male-dominated field knew she wrote Fanfic and enjoyed cosplay.

So this is a kind of re-boot of You've Got Mail, Marcus discovers April's alter-ego on their first date but is too worried about his career to confess to his own alter-ego - we all know where this is going don't we?

First off, I don't read Fanfic and I don't go to conferences like Comicon - so this isn't my area of interest. Indeed, I think I saw the ARC on NetGalley and didn't request the book because it didn't sound like my kind of thing. I was half right.

I liked this, despite the unfamiliar world and terminology and the extracts from scripts and fanfic, the characters were real and vivid and likable. What let the story down for me was rinse-and-repeat nature of April and Marcus' relationship. He inadvertently says something, she misinterprets what he says and breaks things off. She realises she overreacted and forgives him. He assumes something and acts accordingly from the best of intentions, it wasn't what she wanted, she dumps him. Yadda yadda. I don't know if this was to show that April wasn't perfect either but it felt repetitive and very one-sided because she was always the one who had to realise he had good reasons for his actions/deception.

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