One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London (audiobook)

 genre: contemporary romance

Bea is a fashion blogger, social media influencer and plus-size advocate.  So when she publicly complains that every woman on the reality tv show Main Squeeze (imagine Bachelorette) is a size zero, hardly representing the vast majority of women, she gets the chance of a lifetime: to star on the Main Squeeze herself and let a group of strangers vie for a chance to propose to her.

Except Bea's heart is a mess.  She's not over a previous love and while she does want to make a statement about women of all sizes deserving love and attention, she really goes into this experience with a lot of walls.  She learns about herself, though, she processes a lot of pretty traumatic stuff and finds her own kind of fairy tale.

I loved Bea.  I want to know Bea.  She is witty and complicated and felt very real.  Yes, sometimes her reactions and choices were frustrating - but understandable.   I HURT for her.  I was ashamed for the way she was treated but also, I loved watching her fall into a place where she could truly believe that she was deserving of love.  I cheered in my heart when she figured herself out.

It is WITTY.  The dialogue is great and I loved the multimedia format (I listened on audio but there are a lot of text exchanges, chat rooms, press releases, news articles etc that felt surprisingly realistic and really fleshed out the idea that Bea's story was a trending one).  I've never been huge into reality tv but it was fun to see it from behind the scenes and watch the season progress, to watch the magic and how its created.

I liked the diverse group of characters and the fact that Bea's life was a fleshed out and full one BEFORE love.  Being plus size didn't stop her from being a commanding presence online, from having loving family relationships and good friends, from having authentic and meaningful life experiences and a vast amount of knowledge in her field of expertise.  Do I care about clothing?  I don't, and sometimes I didn't really care to know about every single outfit she wore - but I liked that SHE cared, that she was a complex human being who was not in what our society screams at us is an "acceptable" body.  She is who she is in the body she's in.  Full stop.  The world needs more of that.

content warning: lots of swears and adults talking about sex, one fast and not super explicit bedroom scene