Tips for Tuesday - Books: The One & Music: The Year After

We may have been given complimentary copies and/or access for review purposes to any products, and/or visual or audio media mentioned below. Any and all opinions expressed here are our own.

Books: The One

Today we are talking about The One by Julia Argy. Emily's life isn't going particularly well so when she is recruited to participate in a reality dating show, she jumps at the chance. It's not that she expects to win the competition or even cares about winning, it's more like she has nothing better to do. In fact, the character is kind of aimless and doesn't really seem to have a plan at all, She is not very motivated and kind of hard to like. 

Most of the other female contestants are not very well differentiated and hard to keep straight. Dylan, the guy, they are all vying for is kind of boring, and it's hard to understand why any woman would want him, let alone why he would have a gaggle of women competing for him other than the fact that maybe they just want to get on TV and try to get famous. In fact, some of the women are definitely in it for that. 

The other characters in the book are the producers. They are all just pushy and trying to manipulate everyone to push their own contestants over the others to promote their own careers. In fact, there isn't really any character worth rooting for in this book.

The only really interesting relationship in the book is that between Emily and fellow contestant, Sam. However, that is never really developed enough either. 

At the end of the book, Emily is more motivated than she has been the entire story, and she finally seems to have some direction and a plan. However, the book doesn't really provide any real closure with regard to anything neither with regard to Sam and Emily nor with regard to the competition. There is potential for something to happen in the future, but whatever that is it is a shame that it is left off the page. It seems a lot more interesting than anything that does happen in the book.

The book is clearly meant to be the author's cynical look at reality shows. While these shows definitely deserve to be taken with a grain of salt, this book definitely isn't the most interesting way to get that point across.

Music: The Year After

Today we are talking about The Year After, a song cycle by Tim Aumiller and Scott Schneider. This album is a collection of songs that seem to be the songwriters' way of trying to process everything that happened in the past few years including protests, just wanting to be happy again, and more. The album's cast is made up of a number of Broadway performers the most well-known of whom is probably Krystina Alabado of Mean Girl and Max Crumm of Disaster and You're the One That I Want. The songs are nice enough, but none of them really stand out more than the others. It should also be noted that these songs are definitely not appropriate for younger ears due to both subject matter and language. 

The Year After is available for streaming now. For information, visit www.nohopeproductions.com

Tune in tomorrow for Where-To-Go Wednesday.