Name: All the Feels
ISBN: 9781250084095

Danika Stone

Karin Goble

When an avid fangirl's favorite character is killed off, she and her best friend, an aspiring actor and Steampunk enthusiast, decide to fight back—and end up changing everything.

All is Fair in Love and Fandom

All the Feels

Denaiir

I really liked the idea of this book when I first heard about it, I thought it could depict fans as apt people who had a goal and would fight for their ideals, and it could have been awesome. Except it wasn't. At all. 

The writing was not great, nothing special, but I don't think it was particularly bad either, it's not the reason why I didn't like the book. 

The characters however... they were horrible!

Of course the main issue is with the main character Liv, who is so immature that it's completely impossible to relate to her (and I'm an adult who has been involved in fandoms for 15 years, so I know how it is to feel strongly about imaginary realms). Liv is supposed to be in college, but she sounds like she's in middle school. She cries for days, doesn't get out of bed, and just can't cope when her favorite character is killed. I have been a huge fan of certain shows, but this never happened to me! If canon didn't go where I wanted it to, I read fanfics, or I wrote fanfics, but I never stopped showering and getting out of bed! She is over-reacting so much that it feels completely unreal. 

We are supposed to empathize with the fact that her mom forbids her from making vids, but she almost failed high school because she was too much into it (and didn't get her scholarship, which was bad because her mom works her ass off to get her into college). So I didn't feel at all like the mom was going too far, I thought she was just sensible! But I still have to admit that the mom didn't feel much like a flesh and bone character, her character fell flat. She didn't discuss anything with Liv, just took arbitrary decisions that didn't depict a great mother/daughter relationship.

And her boyfriend!! Oh my, he was a caricature, just there to be the annoying step-dad who was getting in the way of Liv's dreams, ate fried chicken when she absolutely hated it, and was just there to make her life miserable. 

Xander, the best friend/Steampunk cosplayer, who dresses and speaks like a 19th century Englishman (accent included) was weird and bland (haha that takes the cake!), he felt like a parody. The way Xander spoke was just really creepy. He referred to Liv as “dearest” all the time and it got on my nerves very quickly. (view spoiler)[ I saw the romance between the two coming from miles away, which would have been ok if it felt right. But it was not interesting at all, and the way he talked about Liv's body was so weird! His reaction at the end when he thought she didn't want to be with him, just because she was not there when he woke up felt like he was majorly overreacting. Again, it felt like they were in middle school.  (hide spoiler)]

There was girl hate (Liv hated Xander's girlfriend because she was too nice and too social), and the people from the fandom were inadequate in person and Liv ended up not liking them. I don't know if the worst part was that they felt like bad and cliche cartoon characters (an online friend that Liv has liked for years suddenly becomes a joke because she is middle-aged and fat (reference to her "sausage fingers")) or that Liv suddenly didn't like them at all anymore as soon as she saw them in person, because they were weird, which is so cliche and goes against the concept of promoting online friendship. 

Also the representation of sexuality was really bad, and that comes from a person who doesn't consider sexual diversity as a must-have in books. I've always had gay people around me and I've always thought it was just natural, I never questioned it. So I think it's good to have diversity in books, I understand that it is very important for people who are under-represented, but I don't personally like a book just because it has diversity. But this book's conversation on the fact that the main male protagonist is bi was just so awkward!! Everything about it was wrong: Liv, his "best friend" ‘forgets’ his sexuality. How is that possible?? Don't you know him? And her reaction is just so weird: "That’s cool, Xander, it is". Ok, who asked for your approval?? He's your best friend, that's a major thing in his life, and of course it's ok! So yes, this part really rubbed me the wrong way, and that's not necessarily something I generally notice. 

I could go on and on with things that were wrong in this book (the representation of actors and their interaction with fans, the fact that all guys except Xander are weird or assholes, the caricatures that the other online friends were IRL), but I feel like this review is already too long. To sum it up, I couldn't keep from comparing this book to Geekerella and Eliza and Her Monsters, and everything that those 2 books did right, this one did wrong. It's too bad because I liked the premise, but nothing about it was executed well.

Jessica 

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"She stared, wide eyed as glass-walled elevators shot up fifty-two floors like pods in a launch tube. Everything - from the glaringly bright carpet swirling with psychedelic lines; to the hotel's open ceiling ringed by storey after storey of balconies, the distant roof so high it made her head spin; to the people decked out in cosplay - was torn from a science fiction novel. It seemed Liv had spent the last eighteen years in search of her people, and in one sudden explosion of fate, they'd all been brought together in this place in time. Her eyes filled with tears as a sudden awareness filled her."

Review also found here. 

Oh, All the Feels gave me all the expectations before I even cracked it open. I wanted to feel that the main character, Liv, and I were something like kindred spirits. More than that, I wanted to feel that nostalgia that came with the parallels. After-all, when I was both a preteen and teenager, I was engrossed in various fandom groups. Although, to be perfectly blunt with you, times were a bit different back then. Between the use of The-N's message board, Yahoo Groups/MSN pages, not to mention the entirely delightful messes that were Geocities and Angelfire, my experiences in fandom were less in real-time and more in downtime.

(Side note: I'm always consistently grateful that Twitter and Tumblr didn't come about during my middle or high school years. I would have done far worse than I already did.) 

From Harry Potter to Gossip Girl to Degrassi, I had many Obsessive Fictional Loves back in my teens. There was something both endearingly relatable and not about Liv during All the Feels. We meet her in the very aftermath of the loss of her favourite character in--what could possibly be--the final film of a franchise she's loved for much of her life. At the age she stumbled into her beloved Starveil, a Star Wars-esque series of films, it is quite understandable that she formed such an attachment to it.

My feelings for Liv went from warm to lukewarm quite quickly, based upon her reaction to the death of her favourite character. It was just... very hard to like her for the first quarter of the book or even remain sympathetic to her. It felt a bit much for her age-group. If this had been a young girl in her early to mid-teenage years, I think it'd be easier to sympathize with. But, it wasn't.

Hold on, hear me out--despite this, I *do* understand how bothersome it would be if my present-day favourite fictional characters would die; if The X-Files were to return and kill off both Mulder and Scully, I'd definitely have a few words to exchange with the show-runner. If Doctor Who brought back Martha Jones to off her, I'd be bummed. In short, there's nothing wrong with having passion for a fictional world--many of us do. I just felt a little weird about the manner in which she mourned the death of the character in question.

Which included having some sort of meltdown in a movie theater. 

And actually mourning the character, as if he were a real person.

(When J.T. Yorke was killed off on Degrassi, I was hurt. Maybe beyond what I should have been. But, I was also just a very hormonal Freshmen in high school, not university.)

Then, upon further inspection... I am torn.

It is so very easy to get swept away in the woes of fictional life because our experiences in the real world can often be Too Much and we latch an abundance of emotions to a world other than our own, to forget if only for a moment. Liv uses her fandom life as an outlet to express herself and what she loves in the world--and that's not bad. I cannot hate on her for that, even though I have many opinions on the matter.

That being said, All the Feels took a while to get settled into itself before it became what I had hoped it'd be from the beginning. A very sweet, very fluffy coming of age story about breaking out of your shell, falling in love and finding your passions. Something about the portrayal of life both in and out of fandom was very compelling and, again, I did pause at some parts, and question others, relatable.

One thing I enjoyed above all else in All the Feels was the accurate description of online friendships. I met one of my very best friends during the Gossip Girl days and the friendship is one of the realest I have ever had. (Hey, Becca!) And many of my other friends come from the same. (Kayle! Beccah! Angel! Maritza! My ladies.)

The scenes where real-life fandoms get quick mentions are so fun. It reminded me a lot of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell in its tone and will be perfect for fans of that. And those who participate in fandom to begin with.

I also loved the scenes between Liv and Xander; their friendship was sweet (it had some flaws to it that I won't get into, though) and I enjoyed seeing their dynamic develop further, the experiences they share with one another. Watching Liv come out of her shell with Xander, stepping from her comfort zone on many occasions throughout, and begin to live in new, exciting, ways was a joy. Seeing her life in and out of fandom expand and collide was just plain fun.

Overall, I enjoyed All the Feels for the most part. While it was not my favourite book and took a bit of time to come into its own, it was a light read that was perfect for one of the first genuinely warm days of the year. I look forward to reading more from Danika Stone in the future.

All the Feels All is Fair in Love and Fandom

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