This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.
My Review:Title: One to Watch
Author: Kate Stayman-London
Published by: Random House Audio
Release Date: July 7, 2020
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Kristen Sieh
Length: 11 hours and 42 minutes
Genres: Women's Fiction, Romantic Comedy, Contemporary
Potential Triggers: View Spoiler »
Source: Libby
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 Audiobook Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 New Release Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iTunes ✩ Libro.FM
My rating:
Blurb:Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers--and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television?
Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition--under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She's in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful anti-fat beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That's it.
But when the cameras start rolling, Bea realizes things are more complicated than she anticipated. She's in a whirlwind of sumptuous couture, Internet culture wars, sexy suitors, and an opportunity (or two, or five) to find messy, real-life love in the midst of a made-for-TV fairy tale.
5 stars — Honestly, I’m not even sure where to start with this one, I feel like I’m still reeling…in a good way, but wow. This book put me through SO MUCH, and I think it’s going to take a bit to recover, b/c I was seriously heavily invested. I think the word I’m searching for is overwhelmed.
I will admit that there were a few touchy subjects in this book that I wasn’t sure if they were going to mar my enjoyment…some that happened early, some later. But somehow they didn’t. I can’t tell you how many times I was skeptical of where the book was going to go and how things were going to progress, but I can wholeheartedly say that at the end of it I just felt super happy, satisfied, and kind of a hopeful joy. I feel like given the twists and turns in the book, that was not an easy feat to accomplish, and I can’t guarantee that everyone will feel this way, but I can honestly say that by the time I was done I felt like I’d read one of my favourite books of the year, even with all its faults…or maybe because of them? It’s so weird to think of all the things that made me unhappy, but because of where the book ended up, I’m not even going to play it safe with a 4.5 star rounded up…fuck it, it was full 5 stars for me.
I think part of what this book taught me is that mistakes don’t have to define you. That even the best people make really really bad decisions, and it shouldn’t necessarily follow them around for life. I also learned that there are very few people that are 100% villains, but a lot of people who are ridiculously flawed, and sometimes those flaws will be ones you can work with and sometimes they will be ones that you can’t. I loved the message of *choosing*. Choosing love, choosing family.
I will admit that the fatphobia/fat shaming that is inherently a part of this story (because trolls are real, horrible people are real) was HARD to hear. I think on the whole this is a very body/fat positive story, but it exposes the horrible underbelly of our society, and how those hurts can manifest in a fuckton of different ways, from the overt to the subtle. At times it felt like too much, so if you’re sensitive to it, please go in knowing that it is there. The book it sprinkled with text conversations, group chat transcripts, blog posts from random sites on the internet, twitter threads, transcripts of podcasts, etc. And so some of those things are horrible. Just as they are in real life. But the first few times it just ripped me apart because I wasn’t expecting the format. In the end, I actually LOVED the way the story was told, but I just feel like if people need a heads up, then heads up.
And since I’m talking about formats, can I just say that I cannot recommend enough *listening* to the audiobook version of this story? Sure, then you’ll have absolutely no idea how to spell Marin for your review (thanks Goodreads for the character list), but the narrator fucking NAILS this performance. I mean, she had voices for EVERYTHING. I honestly don’t know how she did it, but like every transcript, every text conversation, every podcast…they all had a personality that I felt, and I became invested in some of the recurring ones. And the emotions! FUCK, THE EMOTIONS!! Jesus. Kristen Sieh has catapulted into favourite narrator territory on one performance alone. I’ll probably end up reading books I never would have before just to see how she pulls it off. I mean, I ended up in love with a French accent by the end of it, and it’s never done it for me before.
Obviously I can’t talk about how the story ends up, but I can honestly say I didn’t expect to change my mind and have no absolute favourite along the way. It kept changing. But the ending was the ending I needed, so I’m super happy about that. Obviously there were plenty of horrific guys, but I think the handful of flawed gems were exactly what I needed.
Bea was…so much. I loved how much she learned about herself and how much she grew over the crazy show. I mean, it was fascinating and realistic to see someone who wholeheartedly wants to help change society for the better and show that fat people deserve love and happiness too, but that sometimes what you know to be true externally is not always so easy to believe internally. I feel like we got to see so many vulnerable sides to Bea, and she really got to me. I could see bits and pieces of myself in her. I *hated* some of the things she did, but I loved *her*.
Lots of interesting side characters, including the delightful best friend Marin. Even the secondary characters I feel like went through a journey. Shout out to Allison, probably my absolute fave. And there was a lot of very diverse background LGBT representation that basically made my heart ridiculously happy…one letter in particular that got a teensy bit of the spotlight and made my heart full.
I could probably just write and write about this story, but at this point is anyone even still reading this? I’m 100% not saying that this book is going to hit with everyone, but I *know* that, just like with me, for those it does hit, it’ll hit it out of the park. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Leave a Reply