But the moment Emily arrives, it becomes clear she’s been tapped to win it all. Emily’s producer Miranda sees her as the golden ticket: generically pretty, affable, and easily molded—all the qualities of a future Wife. Emily herself is less certain. It’s easy enough to fall in love under romantic lighting and perfectly crafted dates, but it’s harder to remember what’s real and what’s designed. And as Emily’s fascination with another contestant grows, both Emily and Miranda are forced to decide what it is they really want—and what they are willing to do to get it.
A brilliant send-up of our cultural mythology around romance, The One examines the reality of love and desire set against a world of ultimate artifice and manipulation. (Pub Date: Apr 18 2023)
I feel like this book fooled me a little. I did think something was off, but the story starts very easy to identify with the main character. Emily has suddenly lost her job and then she's scouted to be in the cast of the next The One, which is book language for The Bachelor. She will compete for Dylan's attention while she still needs to live with more than twenty other women, who will also be dating him in the course of the next weeks. She has nothing to lose, and the producer is confident she can go far, being so pretty and easy to deal to with.
3+ for me.
What I don't like is that you know this book is a romance, but the elements of romance, despite it being about reality shows, the most used trope of romance books of the last few years, you can't find the elements there. It's weird. Emily's journey did make me stick around, because I really wanted to know when things would go wrong for her. For someone with such a sad reason to be there, her days in the show were like a fairy tale, and this is a book, it will have a climax somewhere.
Of course, you could argue it isn't a romance, it is maybe Emily trying to deal with her issues caused by her too-religious family. But I don't buy it. And as much as I identified easily with Emily, I also started feeling she wasn't as interesting. The other characters being mostly a bunch of names didn't help, but I can't blame the author for this, it is expected for this trope. In any case, I do think this was intended as a romance, but it takes too long to tell us more of it. It's like the book begins at three quarters, which made it hard for Emily to hold my interest for long enough. I think it could still show her struggle and have pushed forward the romance. I'd probably have enjoyed the book more while getting to know Emily better if it had happened earlier.
I still enjoyed it, it's a quick read, and I had fun even if I don't know enough about this type of reality show. Though too late, the characters show to be lovely, too, even if maybe not deep enough as you'd want. I'm just not sure who to recommend it to, because it is a romance, but that is underwhelming, so it would fall more into the women's fiction genre, but only in part. Well, if you like more hybrid reads, with a less sugary romance, then maybe it's you I can recommend it to.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
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