Spoiler Alert

I had actually started a novella but just wasn't gelling with its mood, so I started Spoiler Alert. I think this had probably come up in my recommendations before, but I was spurred to order it in part by a positive review from K.J. Dell'Antonia, author of The Chicken Sisters. Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade is a fangirl romance, much in the spirit of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl or Conventionally Yours, another recent read. Spoiler Alert is perhaps an even more literal fan fantasy, since it includes a celebrity romance--the female protagonist, April, is a fanfic writer and shipper of Lavinia and Aeneas from vaguely classically inspired cable fantasy megahit Gods of the Gates, which just finished filming its final season. When she posts a cosplay picture on Twitter and receives some online harassment for daring to post a plus-size photo, she's contacted by the show's Aeneas, who asks her out to dinner. But is it all just a PR stunt?

The most fun of this book is the not-so-thinly-veiled snark directed toward Game of Thrones and its final seasons. Finding the parallels between Gods and Game is amusing; the male protagonist, Marcus Caster-Rupp, is clearly a Nikolaj Coster-Waldau type. Well, who can blame April or Olivia there? (By the middle of the book, we're starting to see potential pairings among Marcus' former castmates, so Dade is clearly planning a series.) There's more fun from the fanfic snippets interspersed between chapters, as well as occasional script segments from Marcus' previous, not-exactly-A-list roles (the chef in love with his "sweet spicy sous chef"; the ineffectual scientist in Sharkphoon; the eponymous sea creature in Manmaid). 

Another winning feature of Spoiler Alert is that both parties have interesting conflicts and back stories--there's drama among Marcus' caste mates as he vacillates over what to do next and whether to drop his pretty-but-dumb media person. April's a geologist and amateur costume designer, nervous about showing her true self to the fan community, and hurt by the sudden absence of her best fandom friend and beta reader. Both have deep unresolved conflicts with their parents (and, given the characters are in their late 30s, this felt both cringeworthy and satisfying). Because there are so many threads and we see both April's and Marcus' point of view, the action of the book is face-paced, leading up to a finale at the big Convention that's definitely worth the price of admission.