* I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*It’s truly astounding to me that dozens of people read this book before it got to this final form--agents, editors, trusted friends and loved ones--and presumably not one person thought to compassionately but firmly say, “yeah, no, this probably shouldn’t be published.”(Naturally, this review is full of spoilers, and no, I won’t tag them. I will, however, tell you that in this review I do mention homophobia and physical abuse.)Before I get too fully into it, I feel like I have to state this for the record that I was very much enmeshed in fandom throughout much of my life, so yes, I “get it,” and yes, Britta Lundin “gets it.” Shipping (a term I’ve come to revile thanks to this book) is usually a perfectly harmless, common, and creative way to engage with content, and I don’t take issue with the practice.Cool! Let’s get started!Claire, our protagonist, is a junior in high school and a superfan of Demon Heart, a TV show with essentially the same exact plot as my favorite One Direction/Supernatural fanfiction. We know that she's a superfan because we first meet her writing smutty fanfiction about the two main characters, a demon hunter named Smokey and his sworn enemy, a demon named Heart, in the school library. During this scene we also know that she’s misunderstood by her peers, because a Mean Jock and his Airheaded Lady Friend come over to mock her. She #owns them with fandom knowledge, and they leave chastened. We are further convinced of her social isolation when we learn that her sole friend is the Weird Bible Kid on the Bus, the long-suffering comrade of every socially inept teen in every piece of media since the advent of Christianity.All of this is bad, but it isn’t Bad; I am willing to overlook the idea that in 2018, the year of our lord Steve Rogers, there is just one girl in this high school interested in fandom, and that everyone else loves Carhartt and tight ponytails (yes, this is the specific information we’re given). I’ll take Lundin at her word when she says that Claire is the only Tumblr user within town lines, even though YA books about fandom are currently one of the best-selling and fastest-growing subgenres in popular literature. I will even overlook the fact that when I was in high school a decade ago, Supernatural merchandise was the best-selling thing in Hot Topic, and the Sherlock fans were the loudest table in the school cafeteria. We must leave all of this anecdotal evidence and common sense behind us in order to forge ahead.Onward!Some historical context for those of you who haven’t lost precious years of your life to the tar pits of the Internet: in 2013, Supernatural was one of the most powerful and vocal fan communities online and at conventions, and this was driven in part by folks who saw the chemistry between demon hunter Dean Winchester and an angel named Castiel. At New Jerseycon that year, a teenage girl asked Jensen Ackles, the actor who plays Dean, a question about the homoerotic subtext in Supernatural, which he brushed off, admonishing her not to “ruin it for everyone” and asking to move on. The girl left crying, and it sparked a great deal of conversation about Jensen’s personal feelings about gay people, the place of ships at Q&As, and the validity of accusations about queerbaiting. You can read more about this, from a perspective that’s clearly sympathetic to the fandom, here.If you read the article, you’ll probably notice that Lundin lifted this situation almost word-for-word. After Claire asks a question about her ship, the lead actor brushes her off, and she leaves crying. The difference between the real-life interaction and the fictional one is that the Demon Heart publicity team inexplicably decides to invite Claire to travel with them as a form of damage control. It comes to light at this point that Claire is famous in her own right, someone that the show’s social media manager, Caty, hilariously describes as a “digital influencer” and a “tastemaker in the fandom.” That means that she writes a lot of popular fanfiction.If I were to describe every logistical concern I have about this premise, we’d be here all day. I don’t have a moral issue with Lundin writing this book as a way to exorcise her frustration about intra-fandom drama. It reads very much like an attempt to have some belated control over a 5-year-old crisis: here, a teen stands up to a Jensen clone on a panel for a show that is barely even different from Supernatural, and actually makes a difference. I can understand the impulse to write this story. Is it embarrassing? Oh, totally. But that’s to me personally. It wouldn’t necessarily warrant a one-star review.There’s a great deal of lead-up to the point when Claire becomes a member of the Demon Heart entourage, but none of it is that important. I honestly don’t have the brainpower or patience to break down the idea that a publicity team would invite a belligerent and immature superfan to travel with the showrunners and actors to three separate conventions. That is, indeed, what happens. Claire is determined to use this opportunity to convince Jamie, creator and, apparently, the show’s single decision-maker, that Smokey and Heart should fall in love so that her ship can become canon.Another thing that happens around this time is that Claire meets Tess, a fellow Demon Heart superfan. Tess, we learn, is traveling by car to the same conventions Claire will be attending, and she is doing so alone because none of her friends know about her interest in Demon Heart, and she would surely be shunned if they found out. I just need you to know that this is one of the VERY first things Claire learns about Tess, because it becomes important later.Claire is attracted to Tess, but she reminds herself that her only goal on this tour is to convince Jamie to make her ship canon. From the outset, Tess is positioned as an obstacle to this goal--she thinks that having fanfiction about Smokey and Heart is enough, but Claire wants more. Their second-ever conversation is a bitter argument about this difference in opinion, and then they’re all off to Convention #2. Yes, this is the romance everyone mentions in the other reviews. Cute, right?As she travels with the cast, Claire becomes closer with Forest Reed, the actor she antagonized at the Q&A. He asks for information about fandom, and wants to see her fics. It’s clear he’s working through some stuff of his own, and he admits to Claire that his father was a virulent homophobe. This is another piece of information to hold onto for later.Claire is constantly bothered by Jamie and the rest of the Demon Heart team assuming that she’s not straight, because she thinks the assumption cheapens her logical argument for why SmokeHeart should be canon. Claire draws a distinction between merely wishing for a gay relationship on a show and knowing that the actors are, to use Lundin’s phrasing, “playing it gay.” She distances herself from other shippers because she sees her mission to be one of truth, not of wish fulfillment. This is a perspective I have never once witnessed myself in fandom, but it seems important to Claire, so we’ll let it be for now.During the first night of the second convention, Claire goes on a date with Tess, and they end up making out in her hotel room afterward. The next morning, Forest and Tess get into a conversation about Tess’s identity (homoromantic pansexual) and, look, a lot of this book is very silly, but this is where it takes a gross turn: because Claire is embarrassed by Forest knowing that she and Tess are seeing each other, Claire sneers at Tess and tells her to stop trying to impress Forest. Tess is described as being humiliated by this, but somehow, when they discuss it later, Tess ends up being the one who apologizes to Claire. This is also the point at which Claire begins writing fanfic about Forest and his co-star, Rico. She reasons that it’s because she wants to create an environment within her mind where Forest is “vulnerable” and “real.” This is, coincidentally, the point at which I realized I might be reading a truly bad book.Things come to a head at the final convention stop. Claire conspires with Caty, who I now understand to be a truly unhinged social media manager, to hijack Jamie’s Twitter and...tweet nice things about SmokeHeart fans until he agrees to make it canon. At this point the book feels so off the rails that I’m expecting it to turn suddenly into a Kill the Boy Band -style cautionary tale about the dangers of overzealous fans. But Jamie just storms out, and Claire idly wonders if she might have been a little off base.Another thing that happens now is that Tess and Claire go out for sushi and, of course, they run into Tess’s friends. As they all chat awkwardly, Claire decides it’s time for Tess to come clean about her interest in Demon Heart. So she tells all her friends, right there at dinner/At this point, I was ready for a hamfisted moral lesson about how Claire is the real Mean Girl of the story. That never comes. After Claire tells all of Tess’s friends that she’s secretly into this TV show, she leaves. Later, in retaliation, Tess tells Claire’s mom that she’s gay. Cool relationship! After that, they don’t talk for two months. They get back together in the end for reasons I cannot possibly begin to fathom. The fact that every other review of this book describes this as a “cute romance” is so far beyond me I might never recover.Finally, the worst part.I mentioned earlier that Claire has been writing fanfiction about Forest and Rico. Forest overhears some girls talking about a fic of Claire’s they read that involves Forest, so he goes hunting for it. He finds a fic that describes a sexual encounter between himself and Rico in vivid detail. That’s horrifying enough, but he discovers that Claire took the information he’d shared with her about his homophobic father and extrapolated. In her (published, public) fic, Forest shows Rico a bunch of scars on his back from his father’s abuse. Later, when Forest confronts Claire about how he feels violated, her response is, and I swear to God this is written on the page: “they’re just dicks, you dick!”If you’re wondering if Claire ever faces a single consequence for her disgusting and willful cruelty, the answer is no. You will read this book waiting for Claire to become a better person, or for someone, anyone, to realize that she’s an abusive bully. None of that ever happens. Lundin clearly attempts to paint Claire as a person worthy of our sympathy.At this point, Claire leaves the tour early, but they all meet up a few months later at San Diego Comic Con and have a neat little resolution. Claire defensively apologizes, and Forest realizes how much he’s missed her. Cool. He even steals what she wrote in her pornographic fanfiction to confess his affection for Rico, though for some reason at this point he’s dating that social media manager who gave Claire Jamie’s Twitter password and yet somehow still has a job. Claire is allowed to moderate a Demon Heart panel, and, when asked by a ten-year-old for some advice about writing fanfiction, Claire goes on a long rant about something completely unrelated before coming out as queer to the audience, and let me just say that if I were that ten-year-old I would be totally pissed.Listen, I can clearly go on forever about how angry I am, but I’m going to stop here. I need this to be over. I’ve spent the last few days constantly thinking and talking about this book, and while I know saying that makes it sound buzzy and interesting, it’s actually just kind of gross and sad. Someone should’ve sat down with Britta Lundin and explained that her book is not good, and it’s not going to be able to stand on its own among the many other very similar books coming out right now. If they were really feeling it, they might have also told her that being a fan of a television show in 2018 is not really grounds for persecution. If someone had taken on that uncomfortable role, we all might have avoided this. It would have been a real mercy.