One To Watch by Kate Stayman-London

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

*Before I get into this review, I would first like to say a HUGE thankyou to the PR team at John Murray Press, for approving me to read an E-ARC of this book via Netgalley. I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to read and review One to Watch, and share my opinions with you guys here on the blog* 

Bea Schumacher has put love on the back burner for a LONG time. She claims it’s because her career keeps her too busy (and who wouldn’t want to spend their time attending the lavish Fashion Shows and modelling the beautiful clothes that come hand-in-hand with being one of the most popular plus-sized fashion bloggers of all time?) but deep down she knows this is just an excuse that she tells herself, in order to feel a bit better about being all alone. Bea has been in love with her best-friend for a long time now, and even his engagement to another woman isn’t enough to get her to stop thinking about him.  

After a wine-filled night of watching reality-tv with her best friend leads Bea to write a scathing blog post about there not being enough body diversity out there in the mainstream media, an opportunity of a life-time comes her way. The new executive producer of ‘Main Squeeze’ (think The Bachelor/ Bachelorette type reality dating show) wants Bea to be the next seasons leading lady. With 25 fit young men fighting for her attention, and a phenomenal career boost on the cards, Bea straps in for the most unpredictable 8 weeks of her life.  

This book is refreshing, feel-good and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, in the same way to you enjoy watching The Kardashians and other trashy reality tv, a real guilty pleasure. One thing that I really enjoyed about this book is that it is made up of various media texts around the story- text conversations, emails, blog posts, Instagram comments, tabloid articles, podcast transcripts, fan forums, the lot. As an ex-media student, I really loved piecing the story together through the views of different people, it helped me to get a more well-rounded opinion of the characters by telling the story from so many unique points of view. This also seemed to keep my concentration for much longer bouts of time than the traditional singular point-of-view storytelling usually does.  

This story also explores the ‘troll’ culture, which is the hefty price you pay for being in the public eye. In this case, these ‘trolls’ take it upon themselves to comment nasty things about Bea’s body on social media. Before writing this review, I had a little look on GoodReads to see what other people had to say about it, and I recall seeing someone saying that they were unhappy with how the trolls/ hate comments were depicted because it could be triggering for some people, which I think is missing the point altogether. These comments absolutely are triggering for people, but they’re very real and very much a constant for those in the public eye. Literally just last week, 21-year-old Love Island star Molly Mae was sent tons of abuse about her body after a bikini pic began circulating the tabloids, with people telling her to go on a diet and calling her ‘Lardy’ (and I’m not being funny but if she is considered ‘lardy’ then god knows what I am, because her body is actually insane). Bea is constantly being told that she is self-sabotaging, by not allowing herself to believe that people find her attractive- but how can she possibly be expected to believe this when she is constantly inundated with such abuse, and when one negative comment very easily undoes 100 positive ones. 

I have to be honest after only a little while of reading I thought this was going to be a really cliché story about a plus-size woman looking for love, using every stereo-type under the sun about her being ‘larger than life’ and unapologetically loving herself without caring what anyone else thinks about it, but I was very quickly proven wrong ( honestly such a pleasant surprise). Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. It is fun and feel-good whilst at the same time examining a lot of issues around body-image and relationships, and it really is just the perfect balance of sweet and serious for me. One to Watch is a great cultural commentary on what it’s like to be in the public eye when you don’t fit societies high standards, it has characters that are easy to empathise with, and just the right ratio of romance vs feminist ranting.  

With all that in mind, I am rating this book a solid 4/5 stars. I definitely would recommend giving it read if you haven’t already, I can very much see it making a great beach/ holiday read (not that many of us are going to be travelling to exotic destinations any time soon ha-ha).  

If you have already read this book, let me know what you thought of it in the comments below, I would love to hear your thoughts!