Score: 4.5/5 Bookmarks

Steam Level: 🍆🍆🍆 /5

Thank you to Avon and Harper Audio for gifting me review copies of All the Feels by Olivia Dade. This is the second in her Spoiler Alert series, and I loved it just as much as the first.

Alexander Woodroe is a seemingly reckless and out-of-control actor, so the showrunners on his show decide he needs a ‘handler’. That person is Lauren Clegg, an ER therapist who was supposed to be on vacation, but has the bad fortune to be one of the showrunner’s cousins. He ropes her into the job and neither Alex or Lauren are very happy about it. It soon starts to become clear to Lauren that Alex isn’t reckless at all, but his principles and determination to do the right thing do sometimes land him in hot water.

I loved watching the friendship develop between Alex and Lauren as they’re forced to spend time together. The two seem like they couldn’t be more different, but they have a lot of values that align. As they got to know each other more they were so beautifully warm and vulnerable with each other. I didn’t really buy the chemistry between them until right at the end though, they seemed more like friends who really cared about each other. Having said that, by the end I was 100% here for them as a couple. I absolutely adored the banter between the two of them too, it was pure gold!

This book also hit all my favorite tropes, forced proximity, dislike to love, sunshine and grump, one bed (Alex’s enthusiasm about that was just the best thing ever), etc. etc. I really related to Alex’s love of baking shows and totally agree that Nadiya’s season of the Great British Bake Off was the best.

This book had some seriously funny moments, but overall it deals with some heavier topics too, including mental health, bullying, self esteem, strained family relationships, domestic abuse etc.

The audiobook is narrated by Kelsey Navarro who just puts so much feeling, depth, and snarkiness into the characters that I never wanted to stop listening…. It comes in at a little over 12 and a half hours, and you’ll probably recognize Kelsey’s voice from some of Olivia Dade’s other books on audio like 40-Love and Teach Me.

I can not recommend this book enough, you’ll for sure want to hug it once you’re done! You can download the audio right now via the button below, or grab a physical copy here.

Synopsis:

Following Spoiler Alert, Olivia Dade returns with another utterly charming romantic comedy about a devil-may-care actor—who actually cares more than anyone knows—and the no-nonsense woman hired to keep him in line.

Alexander Woodroe has it all. Charm. Sex appeal. Wealth. Fame. A starring role as Cupid on TV’s biggest show, God of the Gates. But the showrunners have wrecked his character, he’s dogged by old demons, and his post-show future remains uncertain. When all that reckless emotion explodes into a bar fight, the tabloids and public agree: his star is falling.

Enter Lauren Clegg, the former ER therapist hired to keep him in line. Compared to her previous work, watching over handsome but impulsive Alex shouldn’t be especially difficult. But the more time they spend together, the harder it gets to keep her professional remove and her heart intact, especially when she discovers the reasons behind his recklessness…not to mention his Cupid fanfiction habit.

When another scandal lands Alex in major hot water and costs Lauren her job, she’ll have to choose between protecting him and offering him what he really wants—her. But he’s determined to keep his improbably short, impossibly stubborn, and extremely endearing minder in his life any way he can. And on a road trip up the California coast together, he intends to show her exactly what a falling star will do to catch the woman he loves: anything at all.