If you need a realistic rom-com to read this is the book for you. You’ve got you bachelor type TV show and then a Cinderella story all at once, what more could you ask for? While I have never been a fan of The Bachelor or the Bachelorette, that story line gave this book the perfect back drop.

Our heroine Cindy, is not your typical contestant on the fictional show Before Midnight. She is plus sized and her stepmother is the exective producer, what could go wrong. Oh she met the suitor on a plane going to LA before the show started. And she was cast with her two step sisters. I mean if I was to go on a reality TV show I would want their to be family connections.

Over the course of the book, we watch Cindy fall in love, but also work through some of her demons that she has hidden. While being plus sized is it’s own battle she fights that battle well, pointing out along the way that nothing about the show is inclusive. But she also is dealing with her grief through out the course of the book. Her mother died when she was young, and her father died suddenly. Both are things that she has used to hold her back from doing the things that she really wants to. Finding a note from her mother towards the end of the book, forces her to re-evaluate some things and she ends up picking her career over love.

But this wouldn’t be a Disney book or a retelling my favorite fairytale if Cindy didn’t get her prince at the end. I just love that they got their happily ever after on her own terms. I’m grateful that the show helped some, but their wasn’t and overly fake proposal at the end. More along the lines of Sex and the City with the prince bringing her a pair of shoes as an apology.