Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Romance
Spice: 🔥🔥🔥 (out of 4)
Representation: Fat-positive, sex-positive, dyslexia
Description:
Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret.
The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he’d be finished in Hollywood.
April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her “real life”—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction.
On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she’s Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep 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? -Olivia Dade’s website
Review:
I enjoyed this book a lot! I'm a fan of smarty-pants lead characters and April was that and more. Her confidence and creativity were pluses and her cosplay/fanfic persona was hella cool. I like that she had already learned about setting boundaries in her life and teaching Marcus how to do that, too. This is another great book with fat representation because April is not ashamed, shy, or self-loathing, despite her parents’ views on her body. It was also wonderful to see a real discussion of how people with learning disabilities are treated as unintelligent.
Marcus is definitely the epitome of a man written by a woman because he is emotionally intelligent, thoughtful, has intellectual interests, but also listens to women. *gasp* He's a sweet guy but knows when he's made a mistake and always owns up to it. April is sensitive, understandably so, but it did annoy me with how many times she jumped to negative conclusions. It's the classic miscommunication trope, which is a pet peeve of mine. Another thing that bothered me was the author's use of "his sex" or "her sex" when referring to genitals. As you may have noticed in my past reviews, that annoys me to no end.
One of my favorite things about this book are the different glimpses into Marcus's past acting roles. They are hilarious and clever!
In all, I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a significant amount of spice in their romance and enjoys nerdiness.