Skip to main content

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London

 

**SPOILERS BE HERE**

I love to hate watch The Bachelor/ette. It's a guilty pleasure I've watched for three or four seasons now, and every time a new season starts, I say I'm not going to waste my time with it. I waste my time with it. In that respect, I really enjoyed this book. The Bachelorette in book form? Yes, please! It could have used more focus on what the men were up to throughout the week, who the secret (to the bachelorette) villains were, who was the most catty, who was actually decent to everyone, etc., but it's not a book about them, so I understand why we didn't get that. The "winner" was pretty obvious from the start, but that's fine--I sometimes find it more interesting to know that so you can watch the relationship develop without any mystery. I read this in about three days because I was so into The Bachelorette story. I also really liked the epistolary segments--they're my jam.

That's about where my enjoyment stopped. This book was so ridiculously full of cliches that it was painful sometimes. Everyone is a caricature, and so many diversities are shoe-horned in--the non-gender conforming son, the lesbian best friend, the Asian and Black male leads (whose races really didn't even play a vital part, and the Asian lead in particular was fairly stereotypical). 

My main problem was with Bea. Maybe I'm not the right audience for this book and don't have a leg to stand on since I couldn't relate to her. I'm very fortunate that I've never had major struggles with weight--I've always been in the normal BMI range--but I think this book could have been better written so I empathized with her a little more. It was obviously horrible to read about some men being straight up rude to her face or saying she will never find love, and I felt for her then. I really can't put my thoughts into words, but another reader on Goodreads did a pretty good job, so I'll summarize that (because I'm too lazy to go find that review).

Bea wasn't a good role model. Part of her reason for going on the show is to prove to the world that plus-sized women deserve love and are more than their weight. She's a plus-sized role model to people, but she never did anything really laudable. Sure, good for her for putting herself out there, but she complained the entire book about it. It got old very quickly, and it doesn't seem like she really learned anything. There were "gorgeous" men right in front of her, telling her that she's beautiful, and she just didn't believe them. I don't know that struggle, but after weeks of that, shouldn't you at least consider it's a possibility that they don't care about your size? Wasn't the entire point of going on the show to prove that your size doesn't matter? But she never believed it! And, unrelated, why wouldn't the producer include more body types? That was one of the most ridiculous things I've read.

And she was so stereotypical! A lot of the time, size doesn't equate to health and fitness level. Why was that never brought up? I think it was kind of skimmed over--how being fat often isn't a result of eating too much and being sedentary; there are many reasons--but couldn't that have been tackled to change some perceptions? She could have had a medical condition or been on a medication. Or she could just naturally be bigger no matter what she does--which seemed like the case. But if that's the case, talk about it! When the trainer approached her about a great fitness program, why didn't she talk about how she actually already has a program and works out four times a week? Or at some point, someone asks her her favorite food and she talks about California's farmers' markets to try to change the country's view when in reality she wanted to say takeout or burgers or something. Why couldn't she eat healthy but still be bigger? Her attitude and the handling of the plus-size issue were just so frustrating. This book is touted as being body-positive, but is it when she spends the entire book ragging on herself? 

Rant over. Half the book was great and half was not, so for that reason it's gets a perfectly average rating.

Completed: 15 February 2021
Rating: 2.5/5
Recommend: I honestly cannot say

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

  **SPOILERS BE HERE** I am whelmed. I'm also ignoring that this is a fictionalized account of William and Kate. The beginning of the book was great! I was super into it and it was cheesy cute, which was exactly what I needed after reading the very dry  Presidency of William Howard Taft . I love how Bex and Nick bonded over a trashy TV show and Twinkies. They were so cute together. But it went south pretty quickly after Part 1. This book was just so long . It does span eight years, but I couldn't have told you that because the time jumps were difficult to follow. Has a year passed? Have three? Who knows? What could have been the most interesting parts were completely skipped over—Bex goes home to finish university but it's only briefly mentioned. Visit the long-distance relationship and her decision to move to England! Her father dies but we barely get to see her grieving (not due to a time jump). What about her settling into a new country full time? Or her job, which is ju...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

 SPOILERS BE HERE Trash. This book was trash. I had no idea what it was about beyond it probably being a sequel to Ready Player One , which I really enjoyed. But this was just a rehash of Ready Player One , and done really badly. Wade was awful. The relationships were awful. The story was awful. That Prince segment was sooooooooooo overly long. It would have been much better if we could have followed a different set of characters on the quest (those five who called themselves something I can't remember). Or if it had just been about how the winners were using their money to try to help the world. Or a prequel. Anything but what it was.  That's it. That's the review. It doesn't deserve anything else. Parts were fine but overall it was just plain bad. Completed: 7 March 2021 Rating: 1/5 Recommend: Absolutely not
Post a Comment
Read more

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

 SPOILERS BE HERE I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it fell flat for me. I 100% believe part of that was due to me listening to it rather than reading it—I drifted in and out and couldn't keep the characters straight, specifically Izzy and Lexie; something about their names is too similar. I think the plot was interesting, but actions were random and didn't make sense. Why did Mia keep Pearl? I never felt like that decision was fully explored—she just up and left. And why did Izzy (...not Lexie, right?) set fires in the house? That seemed like such an extreme response to the things that happened. The characters were not fleshed out enough. I also felt like I was being led a little too much to sympathize with certain characters and dislike others.  I said the plot was interesting; it was also clunky. It jumped around from one thing to another so sporadically that it felt like a different book at times. It could have been handled a lot more smoothly by cutting some of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more