Ugh. I wanted to like this so much but unfortunately I had a lot of issues. But first the positives; the writing is great in terms of capturing my attUgh. I wanted to like this so much but unfortunately I had a lot of issues. But first the positives; the writing is great in terms of capturing my attention, and keeping me somewhat interested, at least at the beginning. The conversations about fatphobia were important, and I do think this book could help a lot of young teens become more self accepting of themselves and others.
Now, the two main issues I had were the main character Charlie, and the fact that she starts to feel like she’s worthy and loveable is when a boy likes her and that’s not a good message to be sending to young teens; you don’t need a boy to love you in order for you to feel worthy. This would’ve been much more impactful if Brian was a new friend who was confident in their skin and showed Charlie that. Even better if it was a group of diverse women with diverse body shapes showing Charlie that her problems should not be blamed on her fatness and that she doesn’t have to be all about body positivity (because that could turn toxic), but about body neutrality.
Charlie’s characterization was all over the place. At times she was incredibly naive and selfish, self involved and whiney; other times she would sound “mature� even though it also sounded scripted and not organic at all. She really just kept getting more and more whiney. I really wished she and her mom had a much more positive conversation like Charlie had with Amelia. However the way Charlie treated Amelia was messed up and I felt like it was never addressed as Charlie’s fault, but putting blame on Amelia even though she didn’t do anything.
In the whole book, Charlie doesn’t do much, positive or negative actions (other than complain) so character development doesn’t happen until the last 20 or so pages. Sure she has thoughts about her friend that’s not good but she acknowledges those as bad thoughts almost a paragraph later so she doesn’t really need to learn anything later but she doesn’t do anything to grow as a person; she’s also is self deprecating to the point where it seems like she wants to be pitied.
All of the side characters felt one dimensional, Especially the mother and Amelia. Brian was okay, but he quickly turned pretentious and rude about Amelia and that whole drama between the two was honestly stupid. And what Charlie does was so incredibly immature and just plain idiotic. Communication is key to a healthy relationship and Charlie doesn’t communicate with anyone she “cares� about until it starts making her look like a bad person. Again, quite self involved.
There were a lot of smaller moments throughout that irked me and made me roll my eyes but that’s being nitpicky so I won’t go into too much explanation, but I did update my reading journey with those thoughts so feel free to read those. In conclusion, the dialogue didn’t sound very realistic and organic, but scripted and cheesy. The first half was an average read, started off good but everyone loses dimension and there’s no real plot or conflict to follow and everything kinda randomly happen to further the story to a predictable end....more
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