This book made me see exactly what I thought The Bachelor and Bachelorette shows are like. Very fake, being told how to act and what to say or how to say it. I know the show is all about ratings which is how the story is in this book.
Emily lost her job and has no wheres to go. She gets recruited for the show but doesn't expect anything from it.
Dylan is the bachelor in this story and I like him but felt like I do just watching the commercials of the tv shows, yuck. Why would I want to see a guy I might want to be with kissing , making out and god knows what else with the other girls?
I did feel bad for Dylan a few times.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin fo the book to review.

I’ve never seen The Bachelor but did watch the first season of The Bachelorette. My curiosity was sated after one season, as I found it stupid and contrived.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from reading a novel about the behind-the-scenes making of a dating reality show. It has all the cattiness, manipulation, and foolishness one would expect.
It was all right - pretty predictable, right from the get-go, but honestly, probably still more enjoyable than the actual shows.
Thanks to #netgalley and #gpputnamandsons for this #arc of #theone in exchange for an honest review.

A great premise that, unfortunately, goes off the rails and never quite finds its way back. The characters are underdeveloped and plot lacks any sort of direction

Emily is selected to be on a Bachelor type reality show. She didn’t seek it out, she just had nothing better to do after she was fired from her job. It soon appears that she is slated to be the winner. There are two narrators: Emily and her producer Miranda, who is determined to be the winning producer and get a large bonus. Dylan, the bachelor, doesn’t appear to be all that interesting. The other women are just about what you would expect with this type of show with a lot of infighting (both real and setups by the producers). It’s pretty much what you might expect for this type of show, maybe even a bit worse. It takes a lot of the so-called glamour out of the picture.

Also reviewed on B&N under 1IrishEyes430V and Kobo under IrishEyes430

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.

Julia Argy's "The One" is a novel sending up "The Bachelor" franchise while expressing deep frustrations about how women live in a male-dominated world.

In the book, our heroine, Emily, finds herself somewhat accidentally as a contestant on a Bachelor-like franchise. Emily doesn't seem to have much going on in her life, but here on "The One," she makes quick friendships with the male lead as well as a number of the other contestants. While Emily's personal producer, Miranda, is pulling all strings to help Emily "win," Emily is coming to a different realization of her goals.

What's interesting: It is, frankly, fun to peek behind the curtain of reality TV. The producer interference, the jockeying to be "the favorite"--all of that is amusing. The obvious pastiches of reality TV vocabulary and tropes are fun.

What's iffier: Emily just isn't that engaging as a character. She feels very passive, to the point that other characters shine just because they take a more active stance toward their future. Her big moment of realization seems like less a moment of personal discovery (and its according angst) than a potential interest flying by; in addition, I left the book unsure about some of Emily's conclusions and whether they were shaped at all by a theme of male violence in the "real world."

So, overall, it was okay.

With gratitude to the publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read and review an ARC for this in exchange for an unbiased review.

The concept of this book was very appealing, so I thought I'd give it a go. This story gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse at reality TV. We all know that it is staged, but this really gave that idea a whole new perspective.

Soon after being fired from her job, Emily is approached by a producer about an opportunity to join a reality TV show, <i> The One</i>. With nothing else to do, she auditions and decides to participate. Emily is soon cast in the position of front-runner, despite her being less than certain that is what she wants. There is another contestant that Emily becomes close with, that ultimately is the key to her exiting the show.

4 out of 5 stars.

I received a free ARC from the author and NetGalley; and I am voluntarily leaving an unbiased review.

I was really intrigued by the premise but ended up DNFing this at about 20%. I don't really watch reality TV so thought this would be a nice change from my usual romances. Unfortunately I couldn't connect with Emily at all and she didn't seem that "real" to me. I also know almost nothing about reality TV but do they really stop you on the street and ask you to be a contestant??

Emily got fired from the administrative position she didn’t much care about, and then her life took a big turn. She was walking, just out walking, when she was discovered, like in the stories about movie starts from almost a century ago. But Emily was discovered by a television producer working for The One.

On The One, a group of women fight to spend time with a single bachelor (or some seasons, men are there to vie for a bachelorette), and after a last-minute dropout, producer Miranda finds Emily and adds her to the cast. It’s not that easy, of course. There is a battery of tests and interviews, a flurry of packing, and contracts to sign. But then she’s there, in an evening dress, stepping out of a limousine into a love fantasy.

Emily had never seen the show before. She grew up with strict, religious parents and struggles to find where she fits in the real world. She tries to understand what’s going on around her, surrounded by dozens of other women and a host of camerapersons, producers, and assistants. From the start, bachelor Dylan seems to notice her and like her, which causes many of the other women to resent her. But Emily barely notices, as she’s trying so hard to be the woman everyone wants her to be.

The weeks go by (the Hollywood weeks shorter than the usual seven days, to make sure the production team can get the episodes done on time). Emily starts to befriend some of the other women. She finds herself thinking at first about what Miranda wants from her, and what Dylan wants from her. But as time goes on, she starts thinking more about what she wants for herself.

As the number of women left in the competition dwindle, Emily builds closer relationships with the women left. For the first time, she is exposed to strong, independent women who have different beliefs than she does, different jobs, different lifestyles, and different agendas. It gives her the freedom to see herself outside of the life her parents chose for her. It helps her set her sights on her truest desires. It gives her the strength she needs to love and to be loved, because that’s all anyone really wants.

The One is a deep dive look at the female contestants on dating shows like The Bachelor, from the perspective of both a contestant and a producer. Author Julia Argy’s debut novel takes readers behind the scenes for all the laughter and tears that go on behind the scenes, the tedium of the waiting and the endless interviews. The scheming and the dreaming and the falling in and out of love are all there, along with the machinations of producers who get big bonuses based on how well their contestants do.

I was loving the satirical nature of this novel as it poked fun of reality dating shows, and there is a lot of that to love here. But the character of Emily is complex and while I understood where she was coming from, I struggled sometimes to root for her. I wasn’t really sure what Dylan saw in her, or why he kept her in the competition for so long, but I thought the ending was completely satisfying and definitely worth the journey. Fans of dating shows and other reality shows with catty women (I get it—I watch The Real Housewives sometimes too) will find lots of fun in these pages, and romance readers may find themselves invested in the story too.

Egalleys for The One were provided by G.P. Putnam’s Sons through NetGalley, with many thanks.

3.5ish. For some reason, despite the fact that I have zero interest in reality dating shows, I find them so interesting in books. The first parts of this reminded me a lot of the show Unreal (series starring Shiri Appleby, which I really enjoyed), but I felt that right when the story really got interesting, a lot of it got rushed to an ending that felt a little anticlimactic.

The One by Julia Argy is a story about a contestant in a show eerily similar to The Bachelor. It was not a fun story, but we’ve all heard enough to know it would not be. Everyone is manipulated and abused for all their talk of having a therapist on hand. There was some whining and some feeling-sorry-for-oneself and plenty more. It was decently written, had good characters, and a decent plot. I guess I just wasn’t interested in it. I used to like The Bachelor but I got sick of the immaturity. There was some of that in this book as well. I can’t recommend it. I didn’t like it. I thought it was a waste of my time. That’s just me, though.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of The One by Penguin Group Putnam, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #PenguinGroupPutnam #JuliaArgy #TheOne

I'm so confused by this book! I'm not sure if it knows what it wants to be, and why we had to have a fictional take on The Bachelor again. First of all, let me just say, if you are looking for a successful and fun fictional take on the show, look no further than ONE TO WATCH and PATRICIA WANTS TO CUDDLE. After you read those two and still crave more, then you should pick up THE ONE.

Comparatively, THE ONE is a lot more straightforward and only changes a few details about the show (like, the fantasy suites are now casitas and instead of roses you get a necklace if you move forward). We follow Emily, a disappointingly uninteresting main character. She goes on the show because she just got fired from her job and doesn't have anything better to do. She's never had a boyfriend, and also doesn't really seem to have a personality. I'm not sure what we were supposed to glean from her character, but it left me cold and uninterested.

The most interesting part is, slight spoiler, a relationship begins to form between her and one of the other cast members - a relationship that is much more sexier and interesting than the one she is supposed to be having with the Bachelor (or, the "One). Take from that what you will, but I was delightfully surprised by this turn, however it was really the only creative choice that surprised me from an otherwise surprisingly straightforward book. I like that we get a bit of the producer's perspective, and it's clear the author has major insider knowledge of how the show works, but otherwise, I fear this genre has already been beaten into the ground.

The One sounded good, but it wasn't a favorite of mine. I had difficulty getting into it and found the main character, Emily, to be rather uninteresting and most of the other contestants weren't much better, in my opinion.

I feel bad saying this because I so wanted to like the book. I think the author tried hard to show what a reality show such as The Bachelor must be like behind the scenes, but it just didn't seem to work very well.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and publisher for an ARC at my request. All thoughts are my own.

It's been several years and seasons since I watched The Bachelor, and the entire idea behind the show still fascinates me: how millions of people tune in, week after week, season after season, to watch beautiful people fall in instalove in a fantasy environment manufactured for that very purpose. Julia Argy's debut novel takes us behind the scenes of a Bachelor-esque show called The One, giving us an inside look from both in front of and behind the cameras.

After being fired from her receptionist job, 24-year-old Emily is approached on the street and invited to audition for The One. She agrees because she doesn't have anything better to do, and because she is the type of person who is agreeable and pliant. Emily realizes early into filming that she's being groomed by her producer, Miranda, to be the last woman standing, and she's willing to go along for the ride. After all, Emily is open to falling in love...but it may surprise everyone, Emily included, who is on the receiving end of her feelings.

The One is very intentionally a basic, generic version of The Bachelor. Argy doesn't really make an effort to make the fictionalized version of the show much different from its real-world counterpart, aside from swapping roses for necklaces. The women are beautiful and perfectly curated for their appearances and how well their personalities (or lack thereof) will play on-screen. Even Emily, our narrator, is as basic as they come. She is pretty and affable and laid-back, perfectly happy to go with the flow and be molded into any shape that fits, because she doesn't really know what shape she prefers or who she really is. This sometimes makes her a frustrating character to follow, but it's ultimately satisfying to watch her growth over the course of the novel as she begins to understand some elemental truths about herself. Argy uses this environment and these women to bring up thought-provoking ideas about how much control we have over our own narratives, how we differentiate what is real from what is manufactured, and how we perceive ourselves vs. how others perceive us.

In a narrative just as insightful as it is propulsive, and injecting the perfect amount of sharp humor, Argy explores themes of female empowerment, toxic masculinity, sexual identity, the power and pitfalls of being beautiful, the joy of true connection, and the literal business of falling in love. Much like the characters themselves, The One is a book that is so much more than it initially appears to be, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. Thank you to Putnam and NetGalley for the advance reading opportunity.

The One highlights the staged and pre-determined way dating shows are set up to lead the audience to "pick" their favorites. We follow Emily as she participates on The One - - a dating show where all the women are competing to be the one - - the future wife of the picture perfect man that has been hand picked to date all of them. I've never been a fan of shows like The Bachelor so I may not have been the target audience for this book. Having one guy date and kiss multiple women one after the other always creeped me out. Yet, I still enjoyed this book.

This book did a good job of showing the emotional toll a show like this takes on the contestants - - at least the ones who are in it for the man. Many of them are in it for fame and to further their own name or to maybe come back in a subsequent season. At the end of the day, it's all a machine about making money.

Overall, I think the story was a good one at depicting the behind the scenes manipulations by the show executives and producers as well as the contestants and so on. I would have liked a little more solid ending at the book's finish. From my perspective, things felt a little open-ended. I like nice neat bows tying everything up but maybe the way it ended was the best way. Overall, this was a clever and good story with some strong and interesting characters.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntary chose to review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

Huge thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC. I hate giving bad reviews, but this one fell flat for me. I did read the entire book, hoping something would happen that would make it interesting, but it didn’t. If you like The Bachelor, you might like this book. I love the show, but also recently read One and Only and there were too many similarities for me, personally.

Surprisingly candid novel that goes behind the scenes during the filming of a reality dating show. While this book is fiction, I’m guessing a lot of the content in this book is based on reality. Fast paced and extremely entertaining story of Emily, who joins the cast of the dating show almost immediately after getting fired from her dead end job. While she didn’t actually apply to be in the cast and was randomly plucked off the street, Emily finds that she is faced with real issues about love and life. Well written, candid and occasionally darkly funny.

Excited to delve into the inner workings and behind the scenes of a reality TV dating show, I was sure this would be a fun and quick read. However, I was sorely mistaken. It began with promise. Life was not going the way Emily wanted it to with a boring job she did not feel comfortable in and was recently fired from. She is stopped on the street to come and take part in a screening to become a contestant on the dating show The One. She figures what the heck; she has nothing better to do.

The story is told from Emily and her producer's perspectives. While at first Emily seems confident, her character quickly spirals into not knowing who she is and reliving her past through sections that bog the story down. There was so much more the author could have done with the supporting characters to make this much more interesting. Instead, we get more of the same past remembrances and present life changes that seemingly come out of nowhere. It seems the author wanted to address current social issues more than tell a tale that could have been more exciting and humorous. This just was not what I was expecting.

Thank you to Putnam and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions expressed are my own.

A razor-sharp and seductively hypnotic debut novel about the very fantasy of falling in love.

I wanted to read this book because it was a take on reality dating shows like the Bachelor, which I love. But it is so much more. It's about a woman who wants to be seen. She decides to "fall in love" with The One to get attention. But what she learns is so much more about herself and what she really wants. She bucks the system and hopefully we can see a fruitful end to her journey.

Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinusa for letting me review this ARC.

I gobbled down this book in 24h. It was literally nothing like I expected and I had a good time with it.

Considering I have never watched one of the marriage/dating reality shows, I went as blind as Emily on what could happen. "The One" had layer of depth that I didn’t expect - Emily bringing discussions about being a woman in a man’s world, giving in to her desires or following “the right path”, discovering more of herself when faced with the opportunity to make someone fall in love with her in selected moments. As a character, I could see the change coming from the beginning, but I didn't believe she was going to follow through with it, with her choices, so I was positively surprised by this aspect.

I liked the side characters, even if some of them I couldn't remember for the life of me. This doesn't bother me because I think it was the goal of the book - in a reality show that intends to have people marry by the end of it, no one is expected to remember the names of 30 women. Miranda, the producer, was an interesting character and I would have liked to get more from her, in particular from her work relationship and how work plays a role in her personal life, something that is only hinted on.

This book is not a romance, even if there are romantic scenes and even one scene that tends towards steamy. The romance scenes were written with a sort of clinical look, less feelings and more descriptions, which made the book flat, but in tone with the overall narrative.

I liked it and I think there is a good audience for this book out there.

Thanks to PENGUIN GROUP Putnam and Netgalley for the e-ARC for this book in exchange for my honest opinion.