One to Watch: A Novel by Kate Stayman-London
Bea is proud of the life she's created. After coming out of her shell during her undergraduate semester abroad in France, Bea boldly stepped into the world of fashion and created a successful blog: OMB. When her best friend (who has a gorgeous and traditionally thin fiancée) Ray comes to visit, she lets herself believe that she is who Ray wants forever.
In the morning though, Ray is gone.
Months later, Bea is watching the premiere of her usual reality dating show Main Squeeze. After perhaps a few too many drinks, she writes a scathing blog post about how the show lacks any kind of diversity from racial to sexuality to body size.
When she awakes the next day with a hangover, her post has gone viral and has a surprising consequence: Main Squeeze wants her as their next lead. After meeting withe newly appointed showrunner, Lauren, Bea is convinced that going on the show could be a great opportunity for her. As Lauren said, her brand and fame would rapidly grow, but she'd also have the support of the show and network to handle the online trolls. Plus she'd get to wear fabulous fashion and show anyone above a size four that they can be desired.
The first night is disastrous. Despite explicitly telling Lauren she wanted a diverse cast, all of the men look like traditional super models--surely none of them could be genuinely into her. However, as the season progresses Lauren--and the men--allow Bea to hope that maybe, just maybe, she could find genuine lasting love.
But when Ray's reappearance causes chaos, Bea must find a way to not only figure out what truly wants for herself, but also be brave enough to go for it.
I picked up One to Watch because I watch a lot of reality dating TV, love romance novels, and am a plus size lady myself. While I did expect to relate somewhat to Bea, I was immediately hit with how similar a lot of our two pasts have been. Bea and I have both wondered if the men we're interested in truly do not want us or if we're unwilling to believe that they'd want us or if perhaps we want them because they are safe in their unreachability. Rarely does any kind of book strike a cord with me so quickly.
While One to Watch does remain a romance novel and thus has familiar tropes and story beats, this does not diminish my appreciation and enjoyment of the experience of reading it. Perhaps this is because Bea, and a lot of the cast of characters, feel real despite the dramatic circumstances they find themselves in. The online hate Bea experiences does too (and author Kate Stayman-London does not show that hate magically disappearing with Bea's increased fame--also very real).
Stayman-London also manages to balance Bea's darker thoughts with comedic levity. This levity allows the poignancy of other story beats to fully settle in and stay with the reader after they've turned the final page.
If you enjoy romance novels that take dramatic but real-world premise, add a dash of humor, and mix it together to make a reader consider their inner monologue, then One to Watch: A Novel by Kate Stayman-London is for you.
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