Spoiler Alert a delightfully fun romantic comedy

As a plus-sized woman myself this book hits different. If you are plus-sized or otherwise made to feel 'less than', or you are someone who wants to learn and try to understand how life can be for plus-sized people then I'd HIGHLY recommend this book! Olivia manages to write about the thoughts, the struggles and life of a plus-sized woman in general in such a thoughtful and inclusive way. There were more than a few situations/scenes that reminded me of my own thought processes (very uncanny tbh). I LOVE that she portrayed April as an independent and clever woman. She craves love and affection but she knows her worth. She knows that she is someone - with or without partner. She has her fanfic community, she has her lovely co-workers and I enjoyed reading a book where you don't get the feeling the life of the protagonists revolves around love and their relationship ALL the time. As much as I liked it, and this will be one of my reading highlights of the year, I'm sure, I would have given 4.75 stars if there was the option. That's just because of preference, as I could have done with less explicit love scenes, and if we're beeing picky then I would have loved for Olivia to take us a tad deeper into the "working-through-things" part, when things between April and Marcus got a bit rocky. She does a good job, and it is believable/authentic but I would have loved to delve a bit deeper. But as the novel already has 400 pages, I get that some people wouldn't have liked it if it would have been even longer. All in all, a VERY good book!

I've struggled a lot with putting into words what this book means to me. Someone recently said to me that we read books when we a ready for them. As in: if you like the premise but can't get into it, it's not the right time for this book. A couple of times I thought: I needed this book in my teens. But that's not true. I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it and relate to it. So, reading this as an adult who has accepted and learned to appreciate their body was definitely reading it at the right time. From the first page I loved April. She is smart and brave and funny. She is not without flaws, but she knows what she wants. It felt really validating to see my own experiences represented and I had more than one "I am not alone"-moment. I've cried and chuckled while reading this. I liked the snippets of fanfiction and chats, and I think they helped digesting the tougher scenes of the story. I liked how April and Marcus both have their flaws but grow as a couple and individually throughout the story. The angst was definitely on point, and it hurt in all the good ways even though I knew there would be a happy end for them. And I really appreciate how not everything worked out perfectly in the end, that there are still some hurdles and conflicts that didn't just disappear. Spoiler Alert definitely was one of those books I didn't want to end and didn't want to stop reading. I can see myself rereading this regularly, because it just warms my heart.