I fully did not expect this to be a five-star read for me even after having started the book, but I absolutely fell in love with this story. Our MMC Devin used to play the main character in a show that reads as 50% Supernatural, 25% Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 10% X-Files, 5% Teen Wolf— and the character himself is clearly a lot Ackles with some Padalecki and SMG thrown in. And as someone who has spent/will continue to spend many years in fandom (BtVS especially)— but also has never equated the actors with the roles in quite the same way— I wasn’t sure this was for me. But I absolutely adored the way Devin is portrayed as a fan of his own show, while simultaneously getting in his own way because of it. The deeper dive into child actors and their money grabbing parents hit pretty solidly with a lot of the stories that have come out lately, and the way Alex’s perspective of him changed over the course of the story, where she comes to understand him as a real and flawed person, was gorgeous. She’s such a wonderful ball of angst also, and I loved that that doesn’t really change for her and he loves her that way too. It isn’t a fix-it relationship, it’s a place for them both to grow from. Absolutely stunning. This was my first Rosie Danan book and I’ll definitely be picking up more.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC to review.