Review: All the Feels

All the Feels by Olivia Dade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Alex Woodroe is an actor who has played Cupid in one of TV's longest running epic series (Think Game of Thrones) called God of the Gates which has just finished filming its final series. Just like GoT, the showrunners have deviated from the original books and Alex is seriously unhappy with the way his character is portrayed in the final series. Then he gets arrested one night in a bar and Ron, one of the showrunners, islivid. As punishment, Ron sics his cousin Lauren Clegg onto Alex as his nanny/minder. Alex can't go anywhere or do anything without Lauren coming along.

Lauren is an ER therapist, mentally and physically exhausted from dealing with patients at the height of their emotional traumas, indeed her crooked nose is testament to how physically violent some of the patients can be. She was intending to have a relaxing holiday in Spain until familial pressure forced her to visit her obnoxious cousin Ron who then forced her to babysit what could objectively be considered one of the most beautiful men on the planet. Lauren is short, plus-sized and has the afore-mentioned crooked nose. Alex thinks she looks like a bird.

Alex does his best to torment Lauren, calling her Nanny Clegg, and intimating that she is his jailer. For her part, Lauren finds Alex pretty amusing but she hides it all under a veneer of indifference. But as the weeks go on, Alex starts doing everything he can to provoke a smile, or even a reaction, from Lauren and the two become friends.

What did I like about this book? First, Alex might be a beautiful actor with a heart of gold, but he also has his own issues to deal with, which require medication and dietary care. He is genuinely torn between calling out bad behaviour and the consequences for others if he does so. Similarly, Lauren is unashamedly plus-sized, she has to get seat belt extenders on airplanes and narrow chairs are uncomfortable to sit in. She's not just one size larger than average, or even the Hollywood version of plus-sized which is normal for the rest of the world. And that doesn't change. I also loved the banter between these two characters, Olivia Dade does very good banter.

So what didn't I like? You could call this slow burn but in my opinion it tended towards the flabby. I thought I was close to finishing this book last night (heck, at gone midnight) but to my surprise I was only just over halfway through, and while I enjoyed the extra story I felt it didn't really take the characters much further and went a bit more mainstream romcom. Also, the gorgeous actor with the plus-sized, less attractive 'normal' woman was too similar to the characters from the previous book Spoiler Alert.

Nevertheless, Olivia Dade has got a great writing voice and her characters jump off the page.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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