A review by courtneyfalling
One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London

emotional funny hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Wow. This book was full of emotional ups and downs for me. A few notes:
  • The beginning chapters stretched on for so long. I wish we had fewer scenes of Bea pining over Ray and just received that backstory in condensed flashbacks. It felt like the author didn't trust readers to understand how Ray had hurt Bea or why he was capital-B Bad for her: we had to have it hammered in over and over. 
  • Marin, as a gay best friend, reads like a straight woman attempting to write a gay best friend. There was one really cringe-y line about how Bea should "become" a lesbian after Ray breaks her heart that did not sit well with me at all. 
  • There are also so many text message and email exchanges in the first few chapters. It made listening on audiobook really funky at times. 
  • This book really started picking up for me at Bea's first night on the show, meeting all her contestants. But that first night... so much to unpack about that chapter. We absolutely could have had more body diversity among the contestants
    especially with how awful the only plus-size contestant ends up being
    with the book still criticizing the typical beauty standards of reality TV. It probably would've been better.
  • Also, plus-size reviewers have commented extensively on how this book handles/sometimes doesn't handle fatphobia, and those comments are really worth checking out. And especially in this scene of Bea's first night, I had so many frustrated feelings about how the book handles "diversity" over all. For a book with so much emphasis on body type and the cruelties of healthism, it has absolutely no awareness of disability or chronic illness. And there's a moment when Bea, on stage, considers how awful it feels to have all thin men presented to her, where she represents herself in a particularly victimized way... But this is an affluent, college-educated, nondisabled white woman who describes herself as medium-fat headlining a huge reality show. She minimizes the role of racial diversity in the cast as a whole and at no point in the book grapples with any of the privilege she has to be in these situations. This totally could've allowed for an examination of diversity within plus-size and fat communities, but... we never got it.
  • The first group date made me uncomfortable to witness and Lauren overall is not a particularly redeemable character, even if the book tries to make her one. Producers overstep Bea's boundaries constantly.
  • The one-on-one dates roped me into the "finding romance!" aspect of this book most. It is a little hard at first to keep the contestants clear, but I appreciated how quickly the cast narrowed down to the men that caught Bea's attention most.
  • Wyatt!!! I love Wyatt. So much.
    Even if a little sappy, Wyatt's decision to come out to Bea then the general public and his family as aroace felt really well-represented and wholesome. I will fight anyone who says bad things about Wyatt.
     
  • Luke bothered me for huge portions of the plot and I have to say... not surprising how he ended up.
    Also stuff to unpack here about the villainization of polyam people and the conflation of cheating/non-commitment with ethical nonmonogamy...
     
  • Jefferson sucks but I wish the one plus-size contestant of her season hadn't turned out to be so hateful himself. This is where it comes back to wishing more body diversity had existed among Bea's contestants... because then this wouldn't have been the only plus-size contestant turning out to have been an asshole all along.
     
  • I love the variety of emotions and backstories among some of the final men: Asher, Sam, and Wyatt all have such depth that made me care for them even through their flaws. And pretty big emotional and interpersonal issues are handled with genuine care. 
  • I almost lost my damn mind when Ray showed back up on the show and started professing love for Bea. Really, fuck this guy and I wish I could read a version of this book with like 75% less Ray, maybe no Ray at all. Especially because it buys so heavily into the trope that you can't "move on" from an intense emotional relationship unless you realize the guy was a radiating red flag the whole time. No nuance, no sense of mutual incompatibility > individual monsterhood, no acceptance that "closure" isn't always the best option or an option... Anyway. Asher's response here also really bothered me and never got adequately dealt with. Asher absolutely didn't have to choose not to spend the night with Bea: he could've made clear in the dinner/interview portion that he didn't want to have sex to prove how emotionally serious he was to his kids, then still accepted the overnight to talk in private. I get why Bea didn't mention Ray's engagement on public TV: she didn't know if he was still engaged and I understand why she wouldn't want Ray's fiancee to find out like that. And Asher's rush to totally dismiss and insult her was awful and took all the trust I'd started to have in him and just blew it. We needed a much better apology scene, or maybe a drawn out return into Bea's life, than we got.
  • The end!!!! Okay.
    I was really surprised at first, seeing Sam step out of the limo first. I truly did think she was about to end back up with Ray, with all her pining. But honestly, I'm glad we got this idea of being "picky" in love. And Sam becoming the next Bachelor and specifically asking for body diversity among his cast was so wholesome. I'm glad Sam found happiness, freedom, and a lasting relationship! I do think Bea was ultimately right about each of them serving as emotional growth for the other and I can envision a warm continued friendship.
  • The final reunion special was probably the funniest part of the book.
    The kindergarten class teaching Jefferson about anti-bullying? Classic. Wyatt's mom offering public support? Beautiful.
  • As much as I liked Bea with Asher for so much of the book and do think this could've worked as an ending... I needed more. More of a real apology and reassurance Asher wouldn't whip out jealousy and self-sabotaging distance again. You don't magically get forgiven for all the harm you've caused because people have harmed you too.

I do want to reread this in the future and see what it's like knowing what's coming. It's definitely one of the more engaging romance books I've read in a while and I had so many feelings, good and bad and frustrated, while reading because I was so engaged. 
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