Watching Willow Watts

by Talli Roland

[Leah]

When I read a very early copy of Talli Roland’s debut novel The Hating Game last year, I was in love. It was a very original novel with a brilliant plot and insanely wonderful characters. So I was pleased to see Talli would be releasing a second novel and after reading the synopsis for Watching Willow Watts, I was hooked and I couldn’t wait to read it. When Talli emailed me an early copy for my Kindle I was deliriously happy and very eager to start reading it. I’d just finished a previous novel on my Kindle so I was all set for a new read (evidently, Talli knew that!) and Watching Willow Watts was that read.

The plot of Watching Willow Watts is something else entirely. It’s just as brilliant as The Hating Game as Willow Watts dresses up for Marilyn Monroe for a joke at her village’s fete and the subsequent YouTube video ends up going viral as people proclaim Willow is the ‘New Marilyn’. Soon, Willow’s little town, Belcherton, is over-run with Marilyn fans clamouring for a piece of Willow, including supposed uber-agent Jay and Marilyn obsessive Betts. And as Willow sees her being the ‘New Marilyn’ as a way to make money for her heart-broken dad, well, what’s a girl to do? I thought Talli executed the main plot perfectly. I loved Willow’s ascent to fame (and, be warned, you will have to suspend your beliefs when reading the novel!) and I liked that Willow was so selfless that she really only wanted to do it to save her dad’s antique business from failing. It’s a brilliant plot, and one Talli had thought out perfectly.

The novel’s downfall, for me, was Jay. It began and it ended with Jay, the agent who sees Willow and decides she’ll be his ticket back to the big time. Him coming into the novel didn’t exactly ruin it for me, but it did send the novel onto a track well-rehearsed. There was an exchange mid-way through the novel where Jay hit on Willow’s best friend Paula, not knowing they were best friends and whilst he was sleeping with Willow. Paula told Willow, but because Jay had told Willow Paula would probably be jealous, Willow believed Jay and not Paula. It wasn’t necessarily all downhill from there, but it was like a familiar record had come on and I knew exactly how it was all going to pan out. It saddened me. I’m sorry but if there’s one thing I HATE in Chick Lit it’s when supposedly sane women choose their new man over their best friends of many years. It drives me nuts. Plot device or not, I truly hate it. Because in real life that just wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t perceive any time in my life that I would ever believe a boyfriend over a best friend and it keeps happening in Chick Lit and I keep rolling my eyes.

I liked the majority of the characters. Willow, it has to be said, was absolutely nothing like Mattie, Roland’s heroine from The Hating Game. Mattie would eat Willow for breakfast, frankly. I must admit, I was expecting another Mattie-type character because there’s a big, big lack of female characters like Mattie, most are Willow prototypes all meek and mild and although it’s good and it works… It does get a bit boring after a while and I thought Roland had tapped into a wonderful character in Mattie and wished she had done the same to Willow. I mean, Willow wasn’t horrible, she was rather lovely, but her gullibility and her naivete bit. I liked her but I also wanted to give her a clout. I loved Paula, Willow’s best friend, she was very forthright and I was inexplicably sad when Willow shut her down. I also really liked Willow’s dad, along with Betts, the American Marilyn-obsessive. I couldn’t stand Jay, the agent, I wanted to make him disappear. I hated him and it’s rare I say that.

Watching Willow Watts was infinitely different to The Hating Game and for me it just wasn’t as good. The whole idea was there and most of it was executed perfectly, but the colour-by-numbers with Jay/Willow/Paula was just horrible for me. When I’m reading a book it’s never a good sign when I’m thinking of how I would do it differently and after the whole incident with Willow and Paula I was consistently wondering how I’d have done it, personally. I was also surprised at the lack of romance. The synopsis mentions Willow’s ex coming back, but he’s featured in about 10 pages total, most of them coming near to the end with just one solitary appearance somewhere in the middle. I know why that was – it was part of the plot, but the synopsis was rather misleading there as I was expecting more. I did enjoy the novel, don’t get me wrong but it wasn’t as good as The Hating Game. It didn’t have the same oomph. I wanted it to blow me away like The Hating Game did, but sadly it didn’t. The first half of the novel was excellent and then it all just descended into a type of Chick Lit novel I’ve seen time and time again, which made me sad. Talli is a brilliant novelist and has some wonderful book ideas and I will be on the lookout for her next novel but Watching Willow Watts wasn’t as good as her debut novel.