All an Act author’s note/content warning/spoilers

Author’s note: All an Act is a romance about eighteen-year-old high school students who have an explicit sexual relationship starting in chapter one. Like, boom, they bang. They’re eighteen until the epilogue. I’ve learned that part of marketing a book is keeping away people who won’t like it. So, if you don’t want to read this type of story, good on you for knowing your taste. Not that you need my permission to put a book down, but I’m freely giving it. I want you to be happy, and if their age is going to bother you, you shouldn’t start the book. Period.

For what it’s worth, I usually write older characters. I tried writing Lachlan and Isak as college students, and it didn’t work. They argued with me that this is a coming-of-age book, and rather than fight them and their love story, I’m doing my usual warning/informed consent thing.

Okay, now that I’ve beaten that topic to death, I also wanted to talk about tone. All an Act is a physical-fast-burn, emotional-slow-burn romance. While my novels vary in lightheartedness, this one tends toward heavy, although it’s not my heaviest book (Notorious). Which brings me to …

Content warnings/spoilers: All an Act has thematic elements and on-page depictions of self-harm (not life-threatening); domestic violence; verbal, emotional, and physical abuse (not between the main characters); sickness and injury; abandonment; family disputes; underage pregnancy/parenting (main character’s sister, whose ex-partner is close to her in age); divorce; vaping (at first); drug and alcohol use and abuse; bullying; kissing without consent; and internal and external homophobia. All an Act has references to an off-page car accident, deaths of family members, and incarceration. It also has consensual explicit sex and coarse language throughout. If I’ve missed a warning I should include—or if you find a typo—rather than reporting it to Amazon, please email me at info@lesliemcadamauthor.com so I can fix it in a later edition. If you have questions about the content, feel free to email me, and I’ll do my best to answer.

For those of you who have made it this far, thank you so very much for giving this book a chance. It’s what I call a “download from the universe” book—meaning that I just had to write it … and it’s extremely personal. While all characters, events, places, and so on are fictional or used in a fictional way (I’m thinking of you, Santa Barbara), the themes and <waves hands> general things that happen to the characters are deeply rooted in my real-life experiences. My wish is that All an Act makes you feel accepted for who you are, too.