All the Feels

All the Feels by Olivia Dade
ARC Review from NetGalley
Release Date: October 26, 2021
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Why I Love this book:  I'm going to be 100% completely cliche right now and say that this book really did give me all the feels, and it kind of took me by surprise. When I read the first book in this series (Spoiler Alert) I really felt like April was a great stand in for me, I felt like I had so much in common with her and when reading the book I felt like I was living vicariously through her. I absolutely adored Spoiler Alert and I knew that I would love All the Feels too... and I did. But where April felt like the ultimate reader insert fanfic, Lauren felt like a mirror and I wasn't prepared. So there are two big reasons I loved All The Feels... let's jump right in. 

Reason 1:  Dade kicks off the book with this dedication- To all the little girls who learned to stay quiet and not take up space in the world. May you find your inner harpies and demand your due, at long last. The book never looked back from there. I have never been small, never been conventionally pretty, never really been that girl... but I also never felt like I was hiding or shying away. Lauren feels much the same. She is a smart, funny, confident person, it's no surprise that Alex ends up head over heels for her. However, what Dade nails in this story are the million little ways you cut yourself down. You let people make rude comments and you tell yourself you don't care, but really you just become numb and it's easier to let it go then let it ruin your day. You stop expecting amazing things because somewhere along the way you start believing that you aren't worth it. You have great friends who you can be yourself with, but when you head out into the world you notice the way people look at you, so you remind yourself that their reaction says more about them then it does about you. You brush things off, you turn a blind eye, you remove yourself from situations and you tell yourself its okay.... but all the while it's a death by a million paper cuts. You can be smart and funny and confident like Lauren and still feel every slice. That part of this story is so well done. Watching Alex and Lauren work through that aspect of the relationship was both great and slightly traumatizing, because it was all so familiar, and we don't often see that play out on the page. 

Reason 2: Alex and Lauren are absolutely everything. This is a RomCom through and through and these two are so very entertaining. Alex in particular with his absolute unabashed love of fanfic had me in tears laughing. Whenever he got hyped up about his favorite fanfic tropes emerging in his real life I was dying. I don't even like some of the tropes, but here, with Alex screaming about how excited he is to be living his best fanfic life, I couldn't help but also be all in. Lauren has the perfect dry wit to match Alex's chaotic energy, she might have been hired to watch him and keep him in check, but she sees right to the heart of him and the way they play off each other is perfection. Going along for the ride with Alex and Lauren was awesome and I didn't want it to end. Without giving anything away, at the end of the book there are some new opportunities that arise for Alex and Lauren and I'd like to formally put in writing that I'm going to need a book (TV show???) that's just them doing the thing and being entertaining.

I'm not ready to give up Alex and Lauren yet, and while we are at it, we can bring back Marcus and April too! ​

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