Laurie Devore's novel goes behind the scenes of a reality dating show, complete with sordid details, manipulation, and manufactured moments, all serving as a backdrop to a fearless contestant's creeping toward destruction--and her struggle to figure out if the love she feels is real.
"Romances are about the complexities of human beings, about the way we all have a best and worst self, and they both live in the same body, and the most generous person you know can have the most toxic ideas of what a relationship is or how you can so desperately want the worst person to end up with someone perfect for them, can peel back all of their layers."
"Is that what you told the producers?" Rikki asks.
"Nah," I say. "I told them what they wanted to hear."
Jac Matthis is a romance novelist whose first book tanked (the main protagonist chose her career over a man, enraging readers who'd been counting on a different happy ever after), leaving little audience for her second published book and nonexistent demand for a third.
In an attempt to boost her exposure and thereby resuscitate her writing career, the frank and cynical, unapologetically brutally honest, casual-sex fan Jac is set to appear as a contestant on a Bachelor-type reality TV show in which the ultimate goal is a proposal and marriage.
After one last fling, Jac reports to the set--only to find out that her one-night stand is a producer on the show who had been absent during her auditions.
Complications abound as the eligible TV bachelor seems to be falling for Jac, she makes enemies of multiple fellow contestants, she struggles with the staged and manipulated nature of every moment--and she realizes that she's being painted as the villain of the show.
I found it fairly challenging to connect with Jac. The show is purportedly about making a love connection, but we know Jac is using it as a publicity stunt. She knows and we know that she's putting on an act, yet she sometimes toys with the idea of really falling for the bachelor. At the same time, Jac is continually fighting against her feelings for the producer--and he is fighting against his feelings for her--with varying degrees of success. For much of the book, her pretending was frequently difficult for me to parse from what was real. The hometown visit and blatant lying to her parents felt particularly uncomfortable and tough to reconcile, although she had worked herself into a fully problematic situation by then.
Yet the cutthroat, often chilling behind-the-scenes dating-show dynamics and logistics seemed plausible and were horrifyingly fascinating, and I definitely wanted to read on to find out how Devore reconciled the situation.
Devore offers a version of happy ever after, and of revenge, that was fun to watch take shape.
Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book?
Laurie Devore is also the author of A Better Bad Idea, Winner Take All, and How to Break a Boy.
This book's reality television dating show setting reminded me somewhat of the novel One to Watch.
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