• Home
  • ABOUT
  • Contact
  • Reviews By Genre
    • Black Romance
    • Contemporary
    • Cowboys & Westerns
    • Erotic
    • Historical
    • New Adult
    • Paranormal
    • Romantic Elements
    • Science Fiction/Fantasy
    • Suspense
  • Reviews by Theme
    • Celebrities
    • Harlequin Category
    • Holiday
    • LGBTQIA
    • Low Heat
    • Millionaires & Billionaires
    • Motorcycle Club
    • Multicultural
      • Black
      • East Asian
      • South Asian
      • Latinx
      • Interracial
    • Novellas & Anthologies
    • Royalty
    • Small Town
    • Sports
  • Reviews By Trope

Romance and Sensibility

From First Page To HEA

3.5 stars, Celebrities, Contemporary, Review

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

December 16, 2020 Leave a Comment

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

For 7 years Marcus Caster Rupp played Aneas on Gods of The Gates, a high-budget fantasy television show based on a popular book series. He’s also secretly Book!AneasWouldNever, a prolific writer in the Gods of The Gates’ fanfic community.

When geologist April Whittier is harassed online for posting her cosplay of Marcus’ onscreen love interest, he publicly asks April on a date and quickly learns that April is his one of his best online friends. Now he’s falling for her, but can’t tell her his secret without potentially ruining his career.

This book reads like a love letter to the Gen X / older Millenial generation of fanfiction writers who found a niche community through writing about their favorite ships. Within the story, fanfiction writing is validated by every character who comes across it and we never see the toxic or problematic side of fandom. I’d also argue it has a lot of fandom deep cuts. Terms like OTP, beta, AO3, AU and cosplay are used with very little explanation. I think someone unfamiliar with any of these concepts could feel confused.

The romance is propelled by April and Marcus working through the trauma of emotionally abusive parents and finding acceptance in each other.  But the main tension in the plot is Marcus not telling  April he is also her online BFF. I didn’t realize this was in the book and hero-keeping-a-secret it is one of my least favorite tropes, I’m always like:

The audiobook is narrated by Isabelle Ruther and her narration didn’t add anything and at times felt out of sync with the dialogue tags. Ruther seems to have only gotten into narrating audiobooks in the last year so maybe she’s still working it out.

Currently Reading

Kat
Jess

A spin-off of Books and Sensibility, this blog was created in 2015 to talk exclusively about romance novels--From the first page to HEA !

Follow Us on Bloglovin’

Follow

Subscribe !

Reviews By Rating

  • 1 Star
  • 2 Star
  • 3 Star
  • 4 Star
  • 5 Star
  • Unrated

Search

Book Blog

Blog Archive

Abou

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
@romanceandsensibility

I came across this trope a lot this year -Kat #spicybooks #booktok

♬ Still Into You Drill - ShoBeatz

Social Slider

  • Time for a cover reveal! Wall Street Journal bestselling author @kennedyryan1 is excited to reveal the gorgeous special edition paperback
  • The small town of Honey Hill isn’t big enough to handle the feud between Mayor Lunden Pierce and Quade Cannon—-the
  • Picked this up on a trip to 2nd & Charles . Can’t wait to dive into this series - J
  • Welcome to the snack / book pairing challenge! To enter, tell me what snack you are pairing with your current
  • Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’re joining us tomorrow for the Black Friday Readathon. You can still sign up using the
  • I’m ready for the Black Friday Readathon! If you want to join us and read all day on Black Friday
  • It
  • It
Design by SkyandStars.co

Copyright © 2023