This romance centers on April and Marcus. April is heavily involved in the Gods of the Gates fandom (a Game of Thrones type of show) and decides to post a picture on Twitter of herself in cosplay. Because she is fat, because the character she is cosplaying as is not, and because there is still a lot of socially approved fatphobia in the world, she gets a lot negative comments (though she also gets a lot of positive reinforcement from other comments, which is nice). That’s how she comes to the attention of Marcus, the show’s lead. He is attracted to April immediately and doesn’t like the attacks she is receiving online, so he very publicly invites her out.
It’s not long before Marcus realizes that April is his best online friend; she tells him her online handle. She’s a writer in the fandom and beta reads his stories in the fandom. However, Marcus has hidden who he really is so that he won’t get in trouble for criticizing the show, and he continues to hide this from April. It’s the main conflict of the novel. It does make some of what happens a little predictable, but that didn’t really detract from the book because there is so much affection, support, and humor between Marcus and April to focus on. They have fun together, can tease each other, and just generally really like each other. They also both have difficult relationships with their parents, none of whom provide anything approaching unconditional love to their children, and Marcus and April have each other’s backs.
It’s hard to find fat people represented in romance – in books or on screen, and I appreciated that April expressly says she’s not just curvy or a little chubby, she’s fat. Olivia Dade knows what this is like, her dedication at the beginning of the novel acknowledges that, and the representation is very welcome.
I have not read ASOIAF or watched any of GOT, and am therefore not involved in the fandom, so I suspect there were allusions or Easter eggs that I missed. So, I just kind of pictured Gods of the Gates as a grown up Percy Jackson. I don’t think you need to be familiar with GOT to thoroughly enjoy Spoiler Alert, though I suspect being a fan or being involved in the fandom might add to one’s enjoyment of it. And if you’ve been involved in any fandom and have spent time on AO3, then it’s fun to see Dade’s take on what fandoms are like. I’d give it 3 stars, but the representation bumps it up to 4 for me.
