Brilliant YA Novel Explores Difficult Themes with Sensitivity and Honesty

I first passed this book by when I saw it at my favorite book review site, but I was intrigued by the combination of cover and title because the cover told me that the book couldn’t be about what the title suggested. I am so glad that I took a second look. This book is simply amazing and breathtaking in its honesty. As knowing but compassionate masters of words and emotions, the authors touch on so many difficult themes. What are some of these themes? As the “F” in the title stands for fat, one is body acceptance and the lengths that some will go to in order to avoid that shaming word. It touches on other kinds of self-acceptance as well, like accepting yourself and your new reality when a tragic event has altered you and your life. It looks at multiple aspects of peer pressure and bullying, dovetailing with the other themes in the book quite smoothly. We don’t know the full extent of everything that’s going on this book right away; everybody’s story and backstory unfurl slowly (again, masterfully done). This book definitely puts you through the emotional wringer, moving you from anger to sadness to hope.

Peyton is super smart, but she is also controlled by society’s view of what we should all look like as exemplified by the mean girls at her school. It was sad to watch her at first try to starve and exercise so she could lose weight, she hopes, before her former best friend (who admitted to a more romantic inclination just before the accident) returned to town for school. She pushes herself until she is on the verge of collapse, and still they kept shaming and bullying her. The authors describe Peyton’s eating and exercise habits in good detail; it is terrible to think that young girls do this to themselves. Believe me, I know. And once you start on that diet merry-go-round, it’s hard to get off; years and years can go by. A lot of what the authors stated about society’s views on fat people and fat women specifically was dead on. I love that Peyton was trying to gain a measure of control of this in at least one aspect, actually coding and creating a social media app that was meant to give those at her school a safe place to come to talk about bullying and other complicated issues.

Cam is a fantastic character as well. He is probably the one who was altered the most physically by the accident that happened 18 months ago. Unfortunately, it didn’t just break his body but also his soul. He struggles with guilt as well as acceptance for the new way his life has to be. His sections were so heartrending and poignant. I loved Nari, the truth teller!

I actually started reading YA novels in my early teens, back when the genre was just getting started in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I sometimes wonder, at my now advanced age, if I should still be reading these kinds of books. After all, there are just regular adult books that would seem to be more age appropriate for me. But books like this remind me why I occasionally still read YA. I think it has a freedom to explore universal themes in a way that regular adult genre books cannot (or at least can’t do without some difficulty in terms of audience acceptance or being thought as a “literary”—read, non-commercial—book). This beautifully written and heartfelt book exemplifies why I still do sometimes read YA.

Slow-Burn Friends-to-Lovers with Focus on Family

Em is just coming down from double heartbreak after her boyfriend of sometime left her for her best girlfriend. She goes to a lovely little cottage by the sea to lick her wounds. Originally, she and that girlfriend had been planning to go together; her new cottage mate is actually the best man from her sister’s wedding. Devin is a pediatrician who devotes much time to his patients both stateside and in Costa Rica. As they stay together in the cottage, they become friends. When they both return to their normal lives, they maintain the connection and eventually become more.

This is super slow burn friends-to-lovers romance that has a big focus on Family and what that means and how it shapes our actions and lives for both the families we are from and the families that we create (which are not always formed by bonds of blood). I loved the intergenerational aspect of this story; I loved both Gran and Ava (what a little sweetie!). Both Em and Devin are good and decent people who deserve each other and the life they want to create. I was surprised at the amount of landscaping discussion in this book! The book did feel a little too slow at times. The story arc covers a significant amount of time compared to how long the book is. The author sometimes glossed over and summarized events in some places while perhaps showing too much detail in others. But if you just accept that and go along for the ride, this is an enjoyable book.

New Adult Adventures in France

Young, free-spirited Canadian tomboy Niki is having a grand adventure in France. When she reaches a small village, she decides to stay for a while longer to help one of the young men there whom she meets. He is a gentle giant who reminds her of her brother who killed himself, and she feels a need to help him win the woman he has been pining for. There’s another Canadian there, and he finds her equal parts intriguing and annoying.

For the most part, this is a light romance perfect for a summer getaway read. It is quite steamy in parts, as Niki embarks on a sexual relationship with both men at different times for different reasons. I enjoyed the opening of the book, which showed Niki’s fearless nature. For all the lightness of most of the book, there are moments of poignancy, especially when Niki talks about her brother and after Niki is injured towards the end of the story.

Foul and Crude; Hard to Believe It Is From a Major Publisher

I was intrigued by this book because I am always drawn to books with themes about overweight and body acceptance as these are issues I am intimately familiar with. So I wasn’t quite prepared for how raw this book would be. What do I mean by raw? This story is told from the perspective of the overweight heroine in the first person. The guts she lacks when dealing with members of the opposite sex—and her entire experience of men shows them to be at times cruel and unkind because of her size—is not lacking in her forthright assessments and actions and crude language. I had signed up for this book at a review site that doesn’t give previews, so I was flying blind choosing it based on the blurb alone. Frankly, I am somewhat appalled at the level of swearing, crude language, and just plain icky thoughts and actions that this book is full of. I had a hard time getting through it, and I actually found myself wondering if young women these days actually talk to each other like this and think this way. I, for one, hope they do not. While I was sympathetic to the heroine’s weight issue and problems with men because of it, I just couldn’t see her as a completely sympathetic character; she was just too brassy and crude, and I thought her mind and mouth were always in the gutter. Also, I didn’t like reading some details of her experiences. I know in writing there is a big push to show, rather than tell, but I don’t really want to see the heroine’s anus hair mentioned in a book I’m reading just for an escape or guilty pleasure! Yes, this does happen!

Ponderous Stay in a Small Town

Poppy Williams is on a cross-country trek and is running out of gas. Turns out this mom of four has a bad virus. Luckily, she collapsed in the arms of the police chief in a small town in Colorado after she accidentally ran through a stop sign. He and his mother care for her and her children while she comes back to help. Will Poppy stay in this small town or continue on to her mother in California?

This is a very long book. I thought the author spent too much time on scenes that actually don’t do much to further the plot or round out characterization. There were places where she was clearly attempting humor, but it fell flat because of awkward phrasing or the strange images of the word produced. I found this book to be tedious.