Post breakup the narrator of this tale returns to his hometown. He starts by watching many hours of tv including basketball, which side note I’m always all in discussing the 90’s era Bulls.

He soon discovers an equal parts obsession with The Bachelor and the Poet John Berryman.
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They each offer clarity in different ways, pointing out how you can find Hope in culture, albeit pop culture vs poetry. Either way he finds something in both of these and at times they merge and offer comparisons to some lessons he was seeking. Thought provoking and original this was a wonderful debut and looking forward to his next novel.
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Thank you #hogarthpress and #NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I'm going to be totally honest here: I didn't expect Andrew Palmer's "The Bachelor" to immediately grab me and keep me hooked the way it did. This novel is witty, insightful if not bordering on intelligently spoken criticism, and gives a parallel of the main character's life to his reflections and thoughts while watching The Bachelor on tv. I really thought this would be a trashy romance (which I love) about one man's desire to be a contestant, but this book holds so much more promise and plot!

I had a hard time getting through this one. I thought I would love it being an OG Bachelor fan, but this just couldn’t keep my attention. This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, so it left me disappointed.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this one!

I wanted to love this book but it just wasn't for me. I found the main character boring and nothing of interest happened. Maybe the humor or insight was lost on me. There's someone for every book so I'm sure there are people who will love it!

I've always love the show The Bachelor and I think this was a great book for anyone who has ever loved that show. I think it really gave addicts a look into behind the scenes, even if it is fake, so that we could be part of the show too.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for my gifted review copy. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I will never forget when The Bachelor aired for the first time. As a college student in the early 2000s, I still have very vivid memories of gathering in our dorm lounge to watch each week's episode.

It was still in the time when you watched it when it aired, and I loved the community feeling of watching and then discussing it all week long...until the next episode came out!

This was when the contestants still seemed just like us, because there wasn't the celebrity/social media stuff at play yet. It felt weirdly wholesome, and getting a lot behind the scenes felt scandalous and also strangely cathartic.

Although I am no longer a Bachelor fan (and the problematic issues that have arose over the last few years certainly wouldn't have helped that cause...) I do have nostalgia for the early years of the show. This book ended up being the perfect weekend read that surprised me...in a good way!

Although the cover is a bit cutesy and maybe a bit misleading... the narrative is quite different. At first glance I thought this might be about someone wanting to be on the show, but in actuality, it is more of a memoir style that shares about life and the parallels of growing up during the reality show era.

It's more of a coming of age book with cultural critique and social commentary woven within. It's kind of random, and mirrors the show but isn't exactly about The Bachelor, if that makes sense. For some that will be a huge disappointment, but I actually think that is why I liked it?

The reviews for this one on Goodreads are all over the place, but I think that's because many readers were confused and thought the premise would be ABOUT The Bachelor, which is understandable. 3.5/5 stars for me.

I had to DNF this book at 33%. I was expecting a book similar to One to Watch where it was a main character going on The Bachelor. Instead, it's a book that just mentions The Bachelor as well as a poet. The main character relates his life to both the bachelor and the poet.

I found this book hard to relate to. A young man goes to Iowa to house sit for a friend. While there, he turns on the tv only to discover the show The Bachelor. He becomes obsessed with not only the show,but also the poet John Berryman.

This was an ok read but i felt that it needed more substance. I’m sure those that are hooked on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette will love it. I do know some of those people.
Many thanks to Random House Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I tried really hard to like this and parts of it I did enjoy. But there are such long tangents of nothing related the story that have I have to quit this one. I really had high hopes of reading a story about a male bachelor fan. But I just don’t like it enough to continue.

I won’t be posting this on my Bookstagram or goodreads.

I kind of enjoyed this book, butttt just kind of. It was funny and smart at some parts, but other parts, just a little to obvious.

This book is a monologue about the protagonist's personal experience and views on love, marriage, poetry, life, and... the reality show The Bachelor.
A Bachelor himself, the narrator, a nameless young man, is house-sitting in his hometown, Des Moines, and trying to make sense of his love life, reflecting and ranting while watching The Bachelor and reflecting on manhood among other topics (wounded warriors, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman, romantic relationships)
The writing is good, and he sounds almost like the voice of a generation. Some of his insights are quite original.
As I already said, it has the rambling style of interior monologue with moments of clarity. I found it a little boring at times.
It's a good book and well written, but don't expect the next great American novel.

Thank you for the approval, really.
I liked the parts of the real world of him talking and thinking but couldn't care for the "bachelor" monologues, skipped past them. That and the football jargon made me not get into the book, I came to read about a bachelor dropped into a reality show made into a book and this came very short on my expectations, thank you.

As a lifelong fan of all things "Bachelor" related, I instantly opened this book and began reading.

Though it definitely uses the TV show in a different, and really fascinating, way, I loved the writing, but the story was not up my alley.

Though I will still be recommending this book to others, as I can tell it is written wonderfully.

Published by Penguin/Hogarth Press on July 20, 2021

A young man confronts his emptiness as he befriends or dates several women while contemplating the reality TV show that share’s the novel’s title. The Bachelor follows the unnamed narrator for a period of several weeks as he ruminates upon his life while approaching his thirtieth birthday.

The narrator is a writer whose agent is waiting for a second novel that the narrator hasn’t started. He claims to be working on a story based on his grandfather’s life, but he lost interest in writing fiction after breaking up with Ashwani. They were both young writers in New York when they met and fell in love. After the narrator’s first novel was published, he reluctantly moved to Halifax, where Ashwani had taken a prestigious teaching position and was awaiting publication of her first novel. Their relationship deteriorated within months. They cancelled a planned a trip to Mumbai to visit Ashwani’s parents and the narrator instead decided to fly to Des Moines, where he has been offered the opportunity to housesit for his mother’s friend Sadie, who now lives in New York but isn’t ready to sell her Iowa home.

During a layover in Detroit as he travels to to Des Moines, the narrator reconnects with Maria, a poet he befriended in New York who now lives in an old Detroit mansion that offers living and working space to artists. In the mansion, the narrator comes across and steals a bad biography of the poet John Berryman. When he later confesses the theft to Maria, she sends him Berryman’s much better biography of Stephen Crane. Thinking that Berryman deserves a biography of similar quality, the narrator begins intermittent research of Berryman’s life, loves, and poetry. Berryman’s relationships with women, like the Bachelor’s relationships with contestants for his love, frame the protagonist’s own relationships.

The narrator fills time in Des Moines by watching and rewatching episodes of The Bachelor. The bachelor in this season is appearing for the second time, having come to regret his failure to select a mate in the first turn at bat. This time, he tells the audience, he has truly dedicated his heart to finding his perfect love. The narrator deconstructs the show with particular focus upon the need for female contestants to open up, to show their vulnerability, to discuss the tragedies that they have survived, all to demonstrate their ability to engage in an honest and open relationship that will prove their worthiness as a future wife. Allowing the reader to share the guilty pleasure that the narrator takes in The Bachelor while exposing its formulaic nature is the novel’s signature accomplishment.

In Des Moines, the narrator meets and dates a young woman named Jess who works for the dry cleaner. He has brooding telephone conversations with Laura, a college girlfriend with whom he has maintained a friendship. He spends time with Sadie when she visits the house. They connect over The Bachelor — a show that Sadie had dismissed before watching it — and use it as a springboard for discussing love and developing a love of their own.

Sadie introduces the narrator to a wealthy friend who wants him to housesit a ridiculously expensive home at the top of a mountain in Napa while it’s being renovated. The isolation, when Sadie isn’t visiting, gives the narrator more time to brood and think about Berryman. After returning to Iowa for an extended stay with his parents, he visits Minneapolis to dip into Berryman’s archives, where he strikes up a friendship with Dierdre. Where any of these friendships/relationships will go is uncertain, and the novel’s ending leaves them all up in the air.

The narrator sees himself in Berryman, having “spent a good deal of my life engaged in the exhausting and mostly thankless battle of trying to make things matter.” Like Berryman, “nothing sufficed. There was a hole in the middle of his world.” The narrator, on the other hand, is doing little to fill his hole as he contemplates the Chicago Bulls of his youth, recalls reading his brother’s determinedly literary journal entries, dissects Bachelor episodes, and thinks about (and occasionally calls) his former lovers. Berryman at least wrote some decent poetry. The narrator doesn’t do much of anything, apart from writing determinedly literary emails, having heartfelt discussions, and learning to swim.

Berryman wrote: “At thirty men think reluctantly back over their lives.” That pretty much summarizes The Bachelor, except that the narrator isn’t particularly reluctant to look back over a life that stopped amounting to much after he published his novel. The narrator recognizes that he disappeared from himself at some point. It seems like he might be ready to work past that emptiness, but it is far from certain where his life will go. Readers who want definitive endings — or any ending — to a novel won’t find one here. But as a snapshot of a life, The Bachelor is noteworthy for its ability to make the reader think about John Berryman’s thinking and for its subtle suggestion that people script their relationships in much the same way that contestants give detailed thought to how they will need to present themselves on the “unscripted” episodes of The Bachelor.

RECOMMENDED

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. I just couldn't get into this book at this time and won't be leaving a full review.

Admittedly, I'm a sucker for "The Bachelor" franchise as a whole. Of course, that meant this one was a must read...

I loved the writing and the plot. I loved the characters. I loved the feelings that this evoked. I can absolutely see this being played out in real life - and I'm sure it does happen. Reality TV is addicting. It's the lessons we never really learn that cause us to repeat the past and this book showcases that so well.

DNF @ 17%. I was interested in the concept, but the writing style (long sentences, memoir-style fiction) is not working for me.

We join the unnamed narrator as he journeys, figuratively and literally, through a recent break-up with his sort-of fiancee. He takes an opportunity to house-sit his mother's friend's home in his childhood city of Des Moines to get away and maybe work on his next writing project, though instead he gets emotionally invested in The Bachelor reality series, as well as the poet John Berryman. The parallel story line and attachment to The Bachelor (let's face it, we've all gotten sucked into this specific, or similar, guilty pleasure) is evident, though the John Berryman connection is confusing, and to be frank, really boring. The sections about Berryman are a bit rambling and random - this would be a much stronger novel without them. In between, the protagonist makes many questionable and surprising decisions, and every single female that crosses his path is a romantic possibility, a little desperate - but somehow the reader wants things to work out for him. If there was a sequel, I'd absolutely read it. He is not necessarily likable, but quirkily interesting. A charming debut, and see a lot of promise in the author with maybe some sharper editing next time. 3.5 stars, rounded down.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hogarth Press, and the author for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I think this book will only be enjoyed by a very specific reader. I wasn’t into it for the first 30% or so though it did eventually grow on me. The narrator finds himself in a rut, broken up with his fiancé and house-sitting for his mother’s friend in his hometown of Des Moines. As he considers his next steps he begins to examine love and life through the lenses of poet John Berryman and the reality show The Bachelor (specifically Brad Womack 2.0, in case you were wondering). There is A LOT of Berryman in this book, too much for me personally since I didn’t know anything about him and this didn’t inspire me to learn more. The stream of consciousness style is very slow-moving and ultimately this book, with some nice moments, just didn’t hold my interest.