One of the great things about Audible is the ability to return a book if you’re not loving it, but sometimes this backfires. If you’ve made too many recent returns, you might get stuck with a book you’d rather DNF. Well, reader, I lived it. And I powered through just so I could write this blog post and something could come out of the time I spent listening to this painfully detailed breakdown of our beloved show, The Bachelor. That’s right. I listened to How to Win the Bachelor by Chad Kultgen and Lizzy Pace, so you don’t have to. Spoilers to follow.
Let me start by saying that I love The Bachelor and its sister shows, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise. I enjoy examining the shows with Emily in our recaps, and I even listen to Bachelor-centric podcasts for further analysis. I don’t really even think of this franchise as a “guilty pleasure” anymore because I think there are a lot of things about the shows that are worth talking about from a cultural and social standpoint. I should be the prime audience for this book.
Earlier this year, the authors guested on one of my favorite podcasts, Love to See It (formerly Here to Make Friends) to talk about their Instagram account (@bachelorclues), their podcast (Game of Roses), and this book. I really enjoyed the episode, and I buy their argument that The Bachelor is actually a professional sport. Looking at it through that lens offers even more fertile ground for analysis and discussion, so I was excited to pick up How to Win the Bachelor.
I’m about to tell you.
Kultgen and Pace watched every single episode of The Bachelor and recorded copious statistics to compile the most comprehensive data set about the show. This took serious dedication and yielded some interesting facts and player stats about everything from FIMP (first-impression) rose winners to two-on-one date outcomes to group date strategies. But did this data need to inform a whole book? I think not.
When I said I should be the ideal audience, it’s because I think this book would have been better if the main audience was casual-to-dedicated fans of the show, but it’s not. The way the book is set up prioritizes an audience of actual potential contestants. How to Win the Bachelor isn’t just a cheeky title; it’s literally what the book is about. The authors break down in painstaking (emphasis on “pain”) detail the strategies and approaches a contestant should consider employing if they’re on the show in order to reach whatever goal they had in mind, whether it’s to win the ring, become the next lead, or gain the most Instagram followers. This small audience of potential contestants is the only group of people I can imagine finding all of this information of any real consequence to their lives.
Part of what people love about the show is that the fandom and many of the contestants don’t take themselves too seriously. We’re all able to talk about the show and joke about the general absurdity of the entire construct while still enjoying ourselves. Meanwhile, this book has zero sense of humor. And what do you get when you strip a Bachelor book of humor? An Excel spreadsheet written in paragraphs. I was unpleasantly surprised that this was the general tone of the book because I’ve heard these authors talk about their work before and they are funny. Their Instagram account is funny. Why is their book so deadly serious?
The book reads more like a dissertation on the show than a fun book for fans, but it’s a dissertation that doesn’t add up to much. I kept waiting for all of the data on rose quotients, social media followers, player archetypes, and limo entrance strategies to mean something, but unfortunately, it just never really did—unless you truly wanted to learn all of the different ways one can perform a “huju” (hug and jump), including where to place your hands and how to dismount for maximum romantic effect. Yes, it’s that detailed.
The authors’ approach to data
Very occasionally the book reminded me of fun moments from seasons past, like Kaitlyn Bristowe’s iconic “You can plow the f*** out of my field” limo entrance and the infamous Kelsey Poe/Ashley Iaconetti two-on-one in the Badlands, but beyond these “Haha, I remember that” instances, the book just doesn’t leave the reader with much to hang onto.
After reading it, I feel like How to Win the Bachelor just didn’t need to be a book. It could have been a series of TikToks or YouTube videos breaking down the data with visual examples from old seasons. It could have been made into a fun fantasy league guide for hardcore fans. But it’s just not compelling enough to stand on its own as a successful book. Even for fans of the show, I can’t recommend this one.
I really did. I’m sorry.