One To Watch by Kate Stayman-London

Rating:⭐⭐⭐

Read if you like: Spending Monday nights live tweeting this week's episode of The Bachelor, plus-sized leading ladies (we LOVE the body positivity), messy drama

Reading Goal: 8/10

Bea Schumacher, a stylish plus-sized fashion blogger, has a guilty pleasure-- she tunes in every week to hit reality T.V. dating show Main Squeeze. While Bea loves the over the top dates and out of control drama, she is sick of the lack of body diversity on the show. After a blog post she writes about the lack of plus-sized contestants goes viral, Bea gets a call she never expected, offering her the role of leading lady looking for love on the next season of Main Squeeze! Bea, who is still recovering from a broken heart, knows she does not want to find love, but, an opportunity to grow her brand and bring about change on T.V. is too big to turn down. However, as Bea meets the men and feelings start to develop, Bea begins to rethink her opinions on happily ever after.

Admittedly, I am not an avid watcher of The Bachelor and all of it's iterations, but there have been some seasons (Hannah Brown's) that sucked me in to the point of obsession. I was drinking wine and excessively live tweeting my opinions. When reading One to Watch, I had the same feeling I get when I watch reality T.V. dating shows. It was addicting. I could not put it down. The men? Absolutely ridiculous. The dates? Outlandish. The backstories? Tragic. The twists orchestrated by the production team? More dramatic than any moment Chris Harrison claimed was the "most dramatic moment in Bachelor history". This book was a fun read, and it raised a point I have thought on so many occasions-- the cast of shows like Main Squeeze are rarely diverse and truly do not represent what most of us look like. The fact that I could read this book and enjoy everything I love about reality T.V. and the protagonist looks more like me than any leading lady on a dating show ever? Absolutely love it.

While I adored the body positive message and plus-size representation in a romance novel, sometimes I felt like Bea's body and her insecurities about her physical appearance were almost undermining to the overall message. So much of the book is Bea worrying that the men on the show couldn't truly be interested in her because she doesn't consider herself conventionally attractive, despite the men showing interest, and it can be hard to read, especially as a person who is mid-size. I really liked Bea, and I thought she had great potential as a leading lady-- she's smart, witty, fabulous, but not without her flaws. However, sometimes it felt like she was reduced to just her size. Is it too much to ask for a plus-sized lead whose story isn't about her body? I guess we'll have to tune in next week to find out.

That being said, I did really love this book in the same way I love reality T.V. shows. I think that Stayman-London did an incredible job of adapting the feel of T.V. into a book in a way that makes it addicting, clever, and fun while also adding some much needed body diversity to the romance genre.