CBR Bingo: Bird – in All the Feels, Lauren is described as a bird-ish looking woman, and is eventually nicknamed Wren by Alex – which leads to both some miscommunication and hurt feelings and the resolution thereof.
Overall, this series is light, fluffy, and mostly falls within the bounds of the suspension of disbelief. Each book follows a different actor (or two actors in the last book) from the fictional Gods of the Gates television series and their romantic interest. Each book takes place nearly in parallel with a few key events showing up in each book. I thought that Spoiler Alert and All the Feels were stronger and Ship Wrecked was just fine.
Each of the FMCs (and one of the MMCs) is fat and generally not the socially acceptable version of “beautiful”. April is just fat but otherwise seems to be conventionally beautiful. Lauren is fat, short, round and has an odd face but beautiful green eyes. Maria is fat, tall, unshaven, and generally unapologetic about her body (the horror). These features are key to each character’s experience of love, acceptance, romance, and feature in some way in each story. However, the author, nor this reviewer, accepts that “fat” equals “bad”. Fatness is just an adjective – like “tall”, “short”, etc. The author does not pretend that a characters’ fatness doesn’t impact their experience of the world however and those impacts show up throughout each story.
Spoiler Alert
Spoiler Alert follows the burgeoning romance of Marcus Caster-Rupp, one of the leading men of Gods of the Gates, and April Whittier, a fat geologist. Marcus is tall, blonde, and chiseled. He’s also been pretending IRL to be a himbo for the entirety of his career to help deflect from the fact that he has dyslexia. April is a professional geologist whose dirty little secret is that she does cosplay and writes fanfiction.
April and Marcus meet when April posts a picture of her in cosplay as a character from Marcus’ show on Twitter. A troll insults her for being fat and tags Marcus. Marcus stands up for her and asks her out on a date. They meet for a date, but because Marcus is pretending to be a dummy, April isn’t super interested. Only once he starts showing his true self is April intrigued and agrees to a second date. They get along, keep dating, become deeply infatuated with each other, etc etc. But! They have technically known each other for at least a year or more since they both write fanfiction of the same characters and belong to the same fanfiction community. Marcus figures this out during their first date but hides it from April. April doesn’t learn about this until 3/4 of the way through the story and it is the crux of the fight that breaks them up before they find their way back to a HEA.
Each character’s so-called flaws, or their relationship to their secrets, feels a bit contrived and shallow. However, the conflict between the two that arises over simple miscommunications, as well as the larger conflict around Marcus hiding that he’s actually her best online friend from the fanfiction community is handled well, feels like it’s built on a good foundation and understanding of the characters, and feels like it fits the story. This story avoids several of the features of romance books that I have discovered that I find irritating – we don’t spend too much time in either character’s internal monologue, the conflicts feel based in the reality of the story, there’s an interesting amount of yearning, and we do get to see each character as a real person outside of just the romantic relationship.
All the Feels
All the Feels tells the story of the relationship of Alexander Woodroe, another leading man from Gods of the Gates and a sexy chaos-demon of a man, and Lauren Clegg, a burnt out mental health professional. Alex is the quintessential sex symbol – tall, dark, and handsome. Lauren is short, round, fat, and resembles a small bird. Alex continues to find himself generating poor PR for Gods of the Gates, and the showrunners have had enough. After his most recent incident, they hire Lauren to be his minder. Lauren is supposed to be on holiday in Spain, where the show is filming, but she cannot say no to her wretched cousin and gets roped into the job.
Alex puts on a facade of being a shallow, self-absorbed asshole, but isn’t quite what he pretends to be. He also has ADHD and is the poster-boy for the hyperactive type. Lauren seems chronically incapable of taking her own wants and needs into consideration for anything and is self-sacrificing to a disturbing degree. When they are paired together so Lauren can keep an eye on him until the show finishes airing and Alex cannot damage the show’s reputation anymore, it’s only a matter of time until they realize they’re both into each other. Even before they’re romantic, they’re very cute together. They banter and watch out for each other. They dance around the fact that they are both crushing on each other. It’s all very sweet.
The conflicts in this book are a bit of a bigger stretch and mostly have to do with the characters’ self-sabotage. They do come to satisfying resolutions, and the epilogue makes it clear that both characters are in therapy for their various issues, which is good. The whole book is very sweet, the characters are quirky and lovely, and I think this is the strongest installment in the series.
Ship Wrecked
Ship Wrecked follows the story of Peter Reedton and Maria Ivarsson, co-stars from Gods of the Gates who have a one night stand the night before auditions, who then have to overcome hurt feelings and weird personality quirks, who eventually get back together six years later after filming is complete. They are both tall, fat, attractive actors. Peter’s whole life revolves around his job and ensuring that he is advancing his career. Maria’s priority is supposedly being around the people she loves even though she leaves home where all of her loved ones are to pursue a job that she’s said she would be fine not having.
I wanted to like this one more than I actually did end up liking it. Certain features were really repetitive, but also I’m just not the right audience for these characters.
These characters are supposed to be friends who have known each other and spent nearly all of their time working and hanging out together over the course of six-years and they have precisely one inside joke? Probably the least believable thing about this whole book. Besides the way that that one inside joke leeches into their professional interviews is deeply absurd. Between this weird dynamic and the view into each character’s relatively shallow internal monologues, things get pretty repetitive pretty fast.
They know each other through work. They are both working actors. Maria has known Peter for years and known that he’s professionally motivated. But, after getting together romantically, Maria is some how surprised and insulted that Peter makes decisions for his life based around continuing to have a job and having a reliable paycheck. Ma’am. What? There’s not an ounce of compromise in sight, and she is ready to leave the continent as fast as possible until she gets her own job offer and realizes she’s been an ass. But Peter is still the one to apologize for trying to leave her all alone in LA while he goes to film in Vancouver – or something.
To say nothing of the weird pacing, the lack of yearning or building tension between the characters over the six years they’re supposed to be pining after each other while remaining non-sexual friends, and the Swedish phrases awkwardly sprinkled throughout the book.
