This book was everything I could have wanted and more. I was extremely excited when I got an ARC of this as the subject matter is right up my street and I was really intrigued to learn more about it in general. Part of me was concerned though because I have requested similar books before and been disappointed by how dry they are. Thankfully this was not the case with this book.
Queerbaiting and Fandom is an incredibly comprehensive, insightful and all-round entertaining read. It is a collection of academic essays so be aware that it is written in that style rather than written for the purposes of entertaining the general public. However, I was very impressed by how readable and easy to follow all of the essays were. The essays themselves cover a wide range of fandoms and topic areas, some of which I wasn't expecting and ended up being a pleasant surprise. The obvious offenders are here-Supernatural, Sherlock and Harry Potter all have chapters to themselves. But there are also essays about Nick Jonas deliberately marketing himself to gay fans, the One Direction fandom shipping real-life celebrities and the Eurovision song contest encouraging queer flirting with its hosts. These were all surprising to me and I found them the most insightful essays in terms of introducing me to new knowledge and making me think about things I hadn't considered before.
The only minor niggle I had was a completely understandable one. Every essay must take the time to define queerbaiting and other terms that it refers to, but this was very repetitive when reading the whole collection. The first two chapters were dedicated to defining the term anyway so I feel that the essays could have been edited to remove the definitions for the purposes of this collection, especially since every author used the term in the same way.
Overall, I really recommend this book for anyone interested in the topic. I genuinely wish it was more widely available as I found it very entertaining and I have several friends I know would love to read it. If you can get your hands on a copy, then definitely take the opportunity to do so. I feel this is a book I will revisit several times in the future again.
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