One To Watch: Love, lies and reality tv

What is this about?

Bea Schumacher is a plus size fashion blogger that just called out her reality TV guilty pleasure, Main Squeeze, for being ridiculously narrow minded in their casting choices and you know, not actually acknowledging reality and that women who are thin and beautiful are not the only ones who deserve love.

What else is about about?

Calling out the nonsense reality tv and society in general piles on women for not being thin and beautiful.

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.

One to Watch made me cry as much as it made me laugh and that is a very good thing!

Bea Schumacher is a plus sized blogger who has carved out a path for herself, got a heap of followers and was successful enough to quit her job and do her blogging full time.

She’s also been in love with Ray, a friend of hers from years before. When he comes to visit and they fall into bed together, she thinks they might have a chance together, but he leaves the next day without a word to return to his fiance, and essentially ghosts her.

Fuelled by a little bit — okay a lot of alcohol and heartache — she calls out Main Squeeze, her reality tv guilty pleasure for not having normal women and men on the show, it gets noticed in a big way. And when the new producer, Lauren, calls and asks her to be the next Main Squeeze, she agrees — not for love, but for her career.

And so begins Bea’s search for love

Bea is wounded when she agrees to be part of the show; she is guarded and mistrustful of the gorgeous men around her, never once letting herself think that they would love her for her.

What I loved about this book, is that Bea is so wonderfully relatable — she is hurt and wants to protect herself, and she won’t admit to herself that she wants a happily ever after. She is funny and self-aware, and her insecurities are so, so relatable as well.

The men in the show are all gorgeous, wonderful to Bea and also assholes — the kind you want to stare down if you see them in the street because they’re such epic douches. However their reactions also represent the epic amount of contradictions thrown at women every day. Bea handles these assholes with quick wit, and some tears and I wanted to reach into the book and smack those asses silly for treating her that way.

Readers are taken along as Bea navigates this emotional minefield, and the details of putting a show like this together: the producers, the wardrobe, the ridiculously romantic dates, and the set-ups that make viewers look at one man like a villain and another like a hero.

I have to mention the ridiculously lovely locations (PARIS, OMG), and the lush clothes and dates that Bea got to go on. For those moments, I understood the love audiences have for shows like this.

Bea navigates this as carefully as she can, while juggling her feelings for the men on the show who she gradually begins to realise might actually be there for love; the book’s focus is on her, so she and readers I think forget that there are men there who want to fall in love.

However, before Bea can get to the point of admitting to herself she wants a happily ever after, she has to face her own doubts and insecurities, the ones that have been holding her back since Ray walked out on her and cut off all contact with her.

This is when the show takes us to her family, to the wonderfully big, bold bunch of characters that make up the secondary characters in this book. Bea has been jealous of her brothers because the ease with which they are together is something she has longed for — that love, that family and that life. She feels like she’s disappointing her parents, and honestly, who can’t relate to that? But it’s her parents who are there’s wonderful pair that make her face her feelings, that make Bea realise what she wants — and that she has to let herself be vulnerable to get there.

While, her family across as well-drawn secondary characters, the men who are the front runners needed a little bit more, I think. Granted, I think there’s only so much an author can do in a book with a finite amount of pages that needed to be split with so many characters. Kate Stayman-London genuinely made me want Bea to find happiness with every single one of the front runners, so I can’t say I wasn’t entirely thrilled with what she told us about them.

This book is a joyous exploration of the ridiculousness of shows like The Bachelor and Main Squeeze, that speak to what everyone wants: their happily ever after; finding that one person in the world that is there for them.

It also manages to call out the nonsense that women have to go through every day because of shows like this. Bea is a gorgeous character, who speaks to those insecurities we have to face, and brings her own experiences as a plus size woman for readers to consider at the same time.

I want to say more about the ending, about why it makes sense, and why I still wanted something different for Bea. But, I will say, the ending is true to Bea, to being real (as much as it can be) in a situation like this.

I cried. I was crying with joy and sadness for Bea, and all I can say is add this to your TBR. You won’t regret it.