Louis's Reviews > Watch Me

I listened to the book on CD version of this title. When I typed in this title and author, another book "Reality Chick" came up that seemed to have the same plot details. I didn't have the interest to investigate further.

Listening to this book was a little bit tricky. The protagonist, Ally, often thinks during her verbal conversations with others. So I had to pay attention to discern when she was speaking aloud versus having internal thoughts.

Ally has positive qualities as a character. She is clearly smart as she is taking a psychology class, got into college in the first place, is faring well in her photography class, gets invited to join the photography program, and spends a lot of time in the library studying as a way to avoid all of some of her roommates.

Yet this is not the characteristic that is emphasized in this book. Ally is portrayed as self-destructive in several ways. First, she prejudges everyone she meets and allows this to guide her decision-making only to discover that she misjudged people. This repetitive activity became very predictable and boring.

Second, Ally is the world's worst communicator. She makes assumptions about situations and then acts on them. She could actually communicate with people in an open way and clear up her assumptions, but instead she just barrels ahead and makes her life and others' lives miserable. In order to avoid communicating, she engages in avoidance behavior or, at one point, becomes a slob/deadbeat for a week until her roommates stage an intervention. This lack of communication reminded me of several romance novels I have read where, if the 2 leads would just talk, they would be together in 2 chapters instead of 20.

Now an author has a right to portray a protagonist as they see fit. What I am saying here is that this continuing self-destructiveness made Ally a tiresome and uninteresting character.

Other problems that I had with the story include the unbelievable way that Ally gets tired of being filmed all the time. The book is inconsistent as well since there are passages where she doesn't notice the cameraman anymore and then later wails about having no privacy. This from a person who had watched this reality show for seasons and actively applied to be on.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

Another plot development which I believed stretched credulity was the breakup with her boyfriend. They had been dating for two years. Within the space of 2 months of being in college, they have broken up. This from a couple who allegedly shared everything, IMed each other constantly, and talked on the phone all the time. Ally was not allowed to IM from the house, but there is a phone for heaven's sake. And what about e-mail? Instead they fail to communicate in the aforementioned ways, each making assumptions and failing to clear them up. This did not seem believable. I admit that changes going to college were inevitable, but in two months time they change so much that she breaks up with her boyfriend of 2 years. The dialogue between them did not ring true for a relationship of that long standing, even one from high school.

The supporting characters are an interesting batch. The parents and brother are predictably ciphers with only stereotypical things to say.

Her best friend Grant is somewhat interesting, but is not in the story often enough to learn much about him. He is somewhat dysfunctional in his own way too, which may be why he is friends with Ally, who seems to be an emotional disaster zone with limited emotional intelligence.

Of the roommates, the author does a good job with Simone and Jasmine. They and their stories made this novel interesting. It made me think how much better this book would have been told from five perspectives, instead of just one.

But the boys in the house, even Drew, are again ciphers for the most part. What Drew does all day is a complete mystery even to the end of the book. We know that he goes to the gym, is buff, and goes to school. But for all we know he is flunking out or majoring in basketweaving.

James is another stereotype, a jerk who uses women to have sex and dumps them. I don't recall that he is described as having one redeeming feature, save for the fact that he is nice to Simone until he has sex with her and then dumps her.

All one can hope by the end of the book is that Ally learns to communicate to make her life easier and that she learns to stop making prejudgments and assumptions about things.