But I’m not looking to be fixed. I want to be loved and liked and desired not because of my size, not despite my size, but because I’m ME

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.

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?

Spoiler Alert is the love letter to fandom culture I didn’t know I needed. April is a diehard fan of the show Gods of the Gates, a Game of Thrones style fantasy series. So much so that she writes fanfiction for it under the pseudonym Unapologetic Lavina Stan and does cosplay for her favorite character. She’s kept it hidden for years, but when she gets a new job she decides to make that part of her life public.

When she posts a picture of her in her plus-size Lavina cosplay online, she expects mixed reviews, but what she doesn’t expect is for Marcus Caster-Rupp, the actor playing Lavina’s love interest, to see it. And she definitely doesn’t expect him to ask her out on a date to spite the critics and internet trolls. But what she doesn’t know is that Marcus also has a secret identity writing fix-it fanfiction for his own show as Book!AeneasWouldNever.

I loved this so much. As a fanfic writer and cosplayer, I’ve found that fandom culture can be portrayed so negatively in mainstream media. Dressing up at conventions is seen as childish, and fanfiction is seen as the lowest-tier form of media. But Spoiler Alert takes those opinions and shoves them to the side. Fanfiction is seen as a legitimate art form, cosplay is cool, and being obsessed with a television series is normal. The only time fanfiction needs to be kept a secret is in Marcus’ case, and that’s really only because he’s writing it about his own show and could get sued. The entire portrayal of fandom culture is a positive one, and I love it.

I also loved the representation in the book. The plus-size representation felt authentic and overall positive (especially as April learns to set some boundaries, which I also loved), and Marcus’ dyslexia is handled pretty well. The fact that this book is also set in parallel with Alex and Lauren’s story in All the Feels is something I’ve rarely seen before in a romance series and made me all that much more excited to read the sequel.

So, if you’re looking for a book with nerdy pop culture references, thinly veiled commentary on the awful final season of Game of Thrones, and spicy scenes (and I mean spicy 🌶), Spoiler Alert is a must-read.