SapphicAThon: read a book you got for free.


content warnings: groping, mentions of stalking, internet harassment (specifically sexism, fatphobia and rape threats)
representation: sapphic protagonist, main korean-american character, main lesbian of colour, main interracial f/f relationship, main interracial m/f relationship, main gay character, main gay man of colour, minor interracial m/m relationship, minor f/f relationships

“But up here there are no echoes and no trolls, and I am just a girl wearing her heart on her sleeve, staring at the sky, asking the universe—just for a moment—to be enough.”

My thoughts on this book are a jumbled mess so this review will probably be a jumbled mess, apologies in advance.

This is the sequel to Geekerella, which I haven't read, and follows two different girls: Imogen Lovelace, a girl raised among fan conventions who has spearheaded the #SaveAmara campaign to try to bring her favourite Starfield character back from the dead; and Jessica Stone, the actress playing the new incarnation of Amara who is desperate for the character to stay dead so she can move onto other projects. These two girls also look eerily similar to each other and decide to switch places over the convention.

In general I'm a big fan of books about fandom (Radio Silence, I Was Born for This and Queens of Geek being some of my favourites) so I've been excited about this series for a while. I do plan to read Geekerella at some point, I only read this earlier because it's SapphicAThon and I own a physical copy. But of all the fandom books I've read, this goes to the bottom of the pile. Let's pro-con list this shit because I think that's the only way I'm going to be able to be remotely coherent.

PROS
- Jess was a fantastic main character. She's not very likable for a lot of the book as she spends a lot of time hating her fans, hating her film franchise, hating fandom as a whole. But her reasons are so sound that I couldn't help but always sympathise with her, and I ended up falling completely in love with her.
- The entire supporting cast is also great. I loved any scene with lots of them just hanging out.
- I must admit, I do love a geeky reference, and unsurprisingly this was full of many.
- Sexual assault was handled really well in this. There's a part when Imogen-as-Jess is meeting with a guy who, when hugging her, gropes her ass. Every character makes sure that Imogen knows she did nothing wrong and that he's the asshole, and he ends up getting banned from the convention forever. Unfortunately a bit unrealistic but wonderful to read about nonetheless.
- The romances made me swoon, even the one with a character in it I didn't really like, which I think really speaks to how good Ashley Poston is at writing it.
- I found the main mystery plot really compelling and fun. This book in general is just an incredibly fast read which makes it so good when you're in a mini-slump like I am.
- I listened to most of this through audiobook, and it was fantastic. The two main narrators were really good as both their characters, their characters playing the other character, and all the other characters in the book.

CONS
- God, Imogen was so insufferable. She is exactly the kind of entitled fan I hate who thinks that she has some sort of ownership of the thing she loves and has the authority to dictate what should or shouldn't happen and anyone who disagrees with her is wrong. For someone who grew up at conventions and seems very well-versed in fandom, she was also infuriatingly naive. She somehow can't even fathom that Jess would be receiving constant hate, including things like death and rape threats, despite the fact that this book establishes that the Kelly Marie Tran situation happened. It makes her look really stupid and sheltered in a way that made me irate while reading.
- There are many times when this book reeks of "pretentious nerd". On several occasions someone will monologue, either internally or aloud, about how wonderful it is to be in fandom and love something (which I agree with) and that actually sci-fi and fantasy is better than boring drama movies because who even remembers those anyway (which I disagree with). There are plenty of pretentious film snobs out there but in response there's been the rise of this weird counter-culture of Star Wars/MCU/etc. fans who have decided that actually the sci-fi and fantasy movies they love are better than all the boring Oscar-bait dramas, which are stupid and no one will ever remember them in ten years anyway so who cares, the things we love mean something. There's a level of this I understand: when Jess is talking about how worthless Starfield is and that she just wants to get out of the franchise so she can do important work, it sucks. But the book feels like it takes one step further, which might work for some people but doesn't work for me at all. There's one part where the book seems to be trying to combat this with Jess and Ethan having a conversation where he's saying all these points and says "Does anyone remember who won Best Picture in 1977? Or do we remember the cheesy sci-fi movie?" and Jess points out that Rocky won that year*, but the book quickly pivots away from that. I'm not entirely sure if I'm even making sense here, but basically the pretentious nerd vibe this book gave off really rubbed me the wrong way.

This is a good book: it's well-written, it's fun, it's diverse, it breezes by. All my grievances aside, if you've got a few hours free you wouldn't be wasting your time by picking this up.

*EDIT: Okay, I'm aware of how nitpicky this is, but I would like it to be known that Rocky and Star Wars aren't even from the same year: Rocky won in 1976, Star Wars was nominated in 1977. Annie Hall was what beat Star Wars, and it's honestly kind of weird that the author didn't think to do a quick google to double check that.