Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade is the third book in the Spoiler Alert series, which follows various cast members of a popular fantasy television show throughout the filming of the series. This book focuses on Maria and Peter, two cast members who play love interests and must film together on a remote island after a hookup. Throughout the years of filming, Maria and Peter develop feelings for each other, but question a relationship due to their pasts.
Overall, I haven’t been a huge fan of the Spoiler Alert series. While I typically enjoy the characters which Olivia Dade writes, I am not a huge fan of her writing style. Often, I find the books in this series to not be well-paced, which causes the story to drag. Additionally, I typically find many scenes and conversations to be repetitive, which stops the story from moving forward. Unfortunately, I had many similar issues with Ship Wrecked, the third installment of the series.
One aspect of Ship Wrecked which I enjoyed were the two main characters, Maria and Peter. I enjoyed that Maria always stayed true to herself and would not compromise her morals just to move forward in Hollywood. I appreciated that Maria has a bright, extroverted, optimistic, and confident personality which made her stand out from other characters in the same genre. Additionally, I enjoyed Peter as a male lead character. In romance book, it annoys me when the male characters are “too perfect” with their words and actions. At first, I found Peter very unlikable from his early interactions with Maria and his unwillingness to back her up in order to suit his own needs. While his actions aren’t excusable, it allows his character to undergo a lot of growth throughout the novel.
That being said, I do have mixed feelings towards the relationship between Maria and Peter. On one hand, I enjoyed that many of the disagreements and bumps in the road of their relationship were realistic. The two love interests in this book have two very different views of the world. Based on experiences in their pasts, they have insecurities which appear periodically throughout their relationships. On the other hand, I found these issues to be resolved a little too quickly at the end of the novel. Maria and Peter eventually understand the other person’s perspective at the end of the novel and agree to a compromise in order to keep their careers and their relationship. While I like Maria and Peter and saw them take action to maintain their relationship, I felt like each character made too much sacrifice from what they personally wanted in life to keep their relationship. Even though I was told that these characters would be together forever and ever, I found it hard to believe that they wouldn’t start to resent each other later in life.
A part of this book which frustrated me was the pacing and structure in this novel as well as the series as a whole. This book takes place during the six years of filming for the series and then right before the final season airs. The beginning of this book was stronger than the end of the book for me. When the book reached the current time, the story started to drag with many repetitive scenes and conversations where Maria and Peter speculated about their future careers and relationship with each other. Plot-wise, there wasn’t much moving the story forward, which caused the story to drag, only to end with a very rushed and unsatisfying conclusion to the relationship which I previously mentioned. Additionally, while I did enjoy the beginning of the book more than the end, I felt like it could have been shortened to only feature important scenes which gave readers a better understanding of their relationship.
Some of these issues could have been resolved if written in a different story structure. I feel like the pacing of this story could have been improved if written in the present day with the beginning of the novel appearing as flashbacks throughout the story. As a whole, I’ve had issues with the timeline of this series. Typically, contemporary companion series follow a very linear timeline where once one story ends, the next picks up where the last one left off. However, this isn’t the case with the Spoiler Alert series. In this series, all of the novels occur at the same time, so they will occur at the same time as many major plot points from previous book. For example, part of Ship Wrecked occurs before any of the events in Spoiler Alert, the first book in the series, but then has parts of the novel take place during a major plot point which happens in All the Feels, the second book of the series. As a reader, this made it difficult for me to keep track of what point I was at in the timeline of the overall series, not just in the book that I was currently reading.
While I liked the characters of the book, I did not enjoy this book as a whole. The second half was particularly difficult for me to get through because I felt like nothing was propelling me to the end. I give Ship Wrecked two and a half out of five stars.
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