Page 11 of One-Star Romance

That night, Natalie returned to her room at the bed-and-breakfast where the wedding would be held. She was sharing with Melinda to keep costs low, despite her fear that Melinda might smother her with a pillow in her sleep.

Though Natalie wanted her friends to keep finding love and getting married, she worried about what it would do to her bank account. If they could all hold off for a few more years—she had started working on another book that she felt in her bones was even better than Apartment 2F. So she’d bring it to her editor when it was done and get a larger advance, and then she could afford to buy people things on their registry that they actually wanted instead of a random twenty-five-dollar lemon squeezer.

The rehearsal dinner had gone well. Sure, the speeches were far too long. And Melinda’s toast had included at least three passive-aggressive jokes about how Gabby was their parents’ favorite. But Gabby had thanked Nat profusely at the end of the night.

Still, she was unsettled. While Melinda quickly fell asleep—Melinda was the kind of person who seemed to be able to do everything at the drop of a hat, from falling in love to quitting her job to accessing REM cycles—Natalie fixed her eyes on the ceiling, mind racing. Why had Rob been cold? Had she done everything she needed to do for tomorrow? Would Gabby be happy? What was Rob’s deal?

Screw it, she decided, pushing the covers back and grabbing her laptop, going to sit in the chair by the window as Melinda lightly snored. Time to self-soothe with some kind reviews. There was so much in life she couldn’t control, but at least she’d made something that people enjoyed. That had a 4.3 star rating average, and—

She squinted as the page loaded. Wait. Her star rating had dipped precipitously. When had that happened? She’d gotten one more rating since she’d last checked two days ago, but how could a single review do this, unless it was a…

She scrolled down and found it. One star. No text. No explanation. Submitted an hour ago. She gasped out loud, then clapped her hand over her mouth. In the bed, Melinda stirred, flopping onto her stomach.

Natalie held her breath for a moment, then turned back to her computer screen, that solitary star seeming to grow larger and larger in her field of vision.

Her eyes flitted over to the name. Addison K. No profile picture. Did Natalie know an Addison? She’d been friends with a girl named Addie in middle school, but her last name was Schilling. So One-Starrer was a stranger.

Maybe this stranger didn’t understand star ratings. Natalie had heard of people getting confused and giving a book one star as a reminder to themselves that they wanted to read it. Natalie clicked on Addison’s profile, holding her breath.

But no, this Addie person had marked Apartment 2F as “Want to Read” a couple of months ago. (The proper way to do it.) And while she hadn’t rated many books, she’d generally given the ones she kept track of somewhere between three and five stars.

Okay. People were entitled to their opinions. It was impossible to make something that everyone loved. Plenty of books that Natalie treasured had far lower ratings than this. It was fine! She’d once read a one-star review of one of her favorite novels, where the reader didn’t like that the main character was named Jake because that was her ex-husband’s name. Perhaps something unknowable like that was behind this rating. Some stranger hated her book. That was fine! Everything was so INCREDIBLY FINE that she didn’t realize she was lightly whimpering until Melinda flicked on her bedside light.

“What’s wrong with you?” Melinda snapped, her voice a sleepy growl.

“Sorry!” Natalie said. “Nothing.”

Melinda sat straight up, her hair a mess, glaring. “If you’re going to wake me up, you have to at least tell me.”

“It’s so stupid.” Melinda’s glare intensified, so Natalie threw her hands in the air. “Someone just gave my book a terrible rating.”

“Oh. That is stupid.”

“I know. Like, obviously it was bound to happen at some point. I think…you can prepare yourself intellectually for this, but it feels different when it actually happens. I’m sure you felt this way the first time someone said something mean about your jewelry line.”

“No one has ever said anything mean about my jewelry line.”

Natalie bit her lip. “Mm. Got it.”

Melinda flopped back down onto her pillow. “Maybe this person just has terrible taste.”

“Yeah! I’m sure that’s it.” Nat scanned Addie’s other ratings again. Shit, she did not have terrible taste. Addie’s taste was actually pretty perfect, insofar as “perfect” meant that it aligned with Natalie’s. Addison K also felt that the sophomore effort by Young Male Intellectual was wildly overrated, despite all the breathless reviews in newspapers of note. Addison K also loved the book from their childhood about a female knight in disguise that most people Nat knew had never read (which was ridiculous, because it was a masterpiece, full of adventure and romance). So, if someone whose taste matched her own hated the thing she had written, did this mean that Natalie’s novel was…bad? That this unbiased stranger had been able to see something rotten in it that Natalie hadn’t?

“No book appeals to everyone. I just need to focus on all the positive reviews,” Nat said. “I know plenty of people who told me they really, truly enjoyed it.”

“Right, those people are the ones who count,” Melinda said. “Unless they’re all just being nice.” And with that, she turned off the light, leaving Natalie stunned, the self-confidence she’d cloaked herself in rapidly evaporating.

7

“These dark circles, no good,” the woman doing makeup for Gabby’s bridal party said the next morning as Natalie plopped into her chair. “Were you up all night?”

It’s hard to fall asleep when you’re tossing about in a sea of self-doubt, Natalie considered saying back.

But Gabby, in the midst of getting her hair curled, turned to her. Her forehead wrinkled. Stress radiated out of all her pores. “Could you not sleep? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Her pitch grew successively higher with each question.

Under normal circumstances, Natalie would have told Gabby about the one-star review immediately. Well, screw them! Gabby would have said, or maybe, They were probably just jealous that they didn’t write your book themselves. She would’ve let Nat throw herself a pity party, then talked her out of it, and then Nat would have been able to shake this uncertainty off. But today wasn’t about Natalie.

“I was just so excited,” Nat said as the makeup woman liberally dabbed concealer under her eyes. “But I’ve got an extra-large coffee, and I am totally fine.”

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