One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London

 

I heard Linda Holmes waxing poetic about One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London on an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour and I immediately put it on hold at the library and began waiting for four months for it to become available.

(Absolutely unrelated tangent: I was recently reading a subreddit and someone mentioned that Holmes had been a mean girl in high school and I'm absolutely DUMBFOUNDED. Don't learn shit about people you admire, friends.)

(Sub-tangent: Don't ever let me down, Mr. Rogers or Tom Hanks.)

So in this book, Bea, a plus-sized fashion model, is recruited to go on a reality show called Main Squeeze that we all know is really The Bachelor.  Along the way to finding true love, she has to face criticism, doubts, and backstabbing producers.  

Interesting characters:

Bea - Hm. She's so...erratic. On one hand, she's all about body positivity. On the other hand, she's not and she constantly thinks shit about her own body.  On one hand, she's "so much more" than her body. On the other hand, it's basically all she thinks about.  I think she's a believable character, but is she interesting? I think not. I wanted her to either a) actually be happy with her body and celebrate it or b) do something to change it.  I'm not suggesting by option b that I wanted to hear about her crash diet or whatever, but we literally never heard about her moving her body except once with dancing she had to be absolutely convinced to do and her diet seemed to mostly be crème brulee and chips. No shade to junk food, but if that's what you're gonna eat, you're gonna not look like the people who are normally on reality television shows.  And now I sound like a fatphobic asshole. Ugh.  Stayman-London, look what you've made me become.

Marin: The best friend. How about a book about her? She seems mature and fun.

Ray: The ex-boyfriend. He's a great villain, but very one-dimensional.

Sam: The young guy on the show.  Obviously hot. Obviously too young for the likes of Bea.

Wyatt: Oh, sweet summer child. A reality show is when you come to the realization that you're asexual?

Luc: Sounds hot. 

Asher: Such a dick.  Learn to communicate, COLLEGE PROFESSOR.

Believable conflict:

There's so much conflict. So much. I guess it's believable in that emotions would be flaring in a situation like this. This woman is dating multiple different guys at once and all the guys live together and talk about it.  I see why there would be jealousy and I also see what it would be difficult to communicate in an appropriate manner. So, I guess? I've never been on a reality show.

But.

I'm still not sold on WHY Bea decided to do this to herself in the first place. She was so uncertain about it and continued to be uncertain until suddenly she was doing photo shoots for People magazine. I think there's conflict and maybe it's believable, but it's absolutely manufactured in an inexplicable way.

Emotional tension:

Yeah, I was 88% through the book and I was trying to figure out how the author was going to get this lady down to one dude.  I was actually tense at the end.

Happily ever after:

I...was not happy. The guy she ends up with is not okay.  That is all.  I hope Bea is happy in her fictional ever after, but I'm pretty sure she's going to end up divorced in eight years with a child and very bitter memories of her time on Main Squeeze. 

I wanted to like this book, I really did. Instead I was just annoyed with Bea, annoyed with Stayman-London, and annoyed that Linda Holmes did me wrong.  Thumbs down.