season with pepper

Edie Pepper has just survived another bad relationship, and she is ready to give up on love. As a 35-year-old insurance copywriter in Chicago, she’s tried all the apps and knows how much they all suck. She wants to find love and start a family, but she just hasn’t managed to find the right guy.

Or has she?

One night of wine and reality television, and she is certain that she has found the one. The new bachelor on the popular reality dating show The Key is none other than her high school boyfriend Charlie Bennett. Now he’s calling himself Bennett Charles, and his Instagram feed is filled with photos of him on all of his travels. He’s climbing mountains, he’s surfing in the ocean, he’s been all over the world and he is showing that off, sometimes without his shirt.

Since Edie decided that she was meant to be with Charlie, she DMs one of the producers of the show to let them know. When she wakes up the next morning, sober, she remembers what she did and is happy to think that she will probably never hear from that producer. But the producer sent Edie a DM right back saying that she loved the idea. Edie flew out to L.A. to talk to the producers, and suddenly she finds herself as a surprise contestant on The Key.

The producers had been struggling with this season. Bennett was a perfect pick for the show, but their last star had been caught making out with another man at a gay bar, on camera, and they had been under a lot of scrutiny about how real their reality show is. This season, they need a squeaky-clean bachelor and a story that the entire country could get behind. And Edie Pepper is someone the country can get behind.

But as soon as they surprise Bennett on air with Edie’s entrance, the chemistry in the house changes. The other women are all immediately jealous. Bennett is thrown off balance. And Edie starts to doubt her idea of Bennett being the guy for her. He’s not the Charlie she knew as a kid anymore. But she was brought on the show to be his perfect match, to redeem them all. So when she starts developing feelings for the showrunner who hired her, Edie finds herself in an impossible situation, where all of America is wanting her to be with Bennett and prove reality show romance is real. But for her to stay true to herself, she has to leave all that behind and take a chance on someone she just met.

Fan Favorite is a hilarious send-up of reality dating television, specifically that one show with all the roses. It’s a debut novel from a reality television show addict who wanted to write about what would happen if a real person joined a reality show, and I thought her experiment worked like a charm. I loved this novel, from the first page to the last.

I am not a big fan of reality dating shows (my mother is, though, so I have watched more than I wanted to). But I am a fan of novels that skewer the reality television tropes. and this one does just that with a masterful hand. Like the rest of the country, I fell in love with Edie Pepper, and I was rooting for her to find her happy ending. To me, this is the perfect summer read, smart but with a character-driven story that just keeps those pages turning. I loved Fan Favorite, and I think anyone who has watched reality dating shows, either because they wanted to or against their wills, will devour this book too.

Egalleys for Fan Favorite were provided by Grand Central Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.