I'm hiding this entire thing under a spoiler because it kinda gets a bit spoiler-y, but it's also super long and gets reeeally personal 😬 You have been warned.

I made the mistake of reading some 1-star reviews for this book while I was toodling around on the book’s GR page, so now you get to hear my whole life story. These reviews were full of complaints about how annoying Charlie was because all she talked about was being fat and how she should have focused more on the body positivity she talked about and how horrible she was to her friend Amelia. One person even said that the book was cruel to skinny people 🙄

I could tell just from the tone of these reviews that these people were not fat and have never felt the way Charlie does. The way I have felt. The way some of her experiences mirrored exactly what I went through in high school. There were times during this book where my chest ached because I knew exactly what Charlie was going through. And it sucks. It sucks in a particular way that, if you have never been fat, you just don't understand. As a teenager, when you are bombarded with images of skinny people in media and told that if you’re fat, you’re automatically unhealthy, it IS something you think about almost all the time. Your body is changing and feels like it’s out of control (because it’s out of YOUR control), and all of a sudden you’re bigger than all your friends. It was especially bad when I was a teenager (not to minimize anyone else’s experience, but low rise jeans, calorie counting and heroin chic were all the rage when I entered high school 😐). There was no body positivity movement then. There were no plus-size stores for teenagers (the only thing that existed was Lane Bryant, which was very much not aimed at teenagers). There was absolutely no online shopping where all the “extended sizes” were. There was even a store called 5-7-9 that only sold those three sizes, which I was not. So yeah, I’m very familiar with the idea of only being able to shop for accessories when you go to the mall and only being able to get clothes at Old Navy. So I didn’t think it was unrealistic at all how much time Charlie spent thinking about her body and comparing it to other people.

And honestly, by today’s standards, I was not even fat in high school. I just had a bit of a tummy. But even that was unforgivable to some people. While luckily I was spared the humiliation that Charlie suffers in this book, I still remember the one time I overheard someone making a comment about my body. For the most part, I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, which was hard, because I’m very tall, and have been since I was about 13. I also have never been what anyone would call skinny. So I was quiet and tried to draw no attention to myself unless I was with my friends. But one day before gym class in 9th grade (of course it was gym class, the enemy of every teenage girl with body issues), I was changing into my gym clothes. While I was wrestling with my shirt I overheard a popular girl whisper-shout to her friends asking if they thought I was pregnant. I was completely mortified and waited until they left the locker room to finish changing. I never told anyone about it because I was so embarrassed, thinking it reflected poorly on me instead of this mean girl who barely bothered to lower her voice while making cruel comments about my body. And I hate that I still remember it now, over 20 years later. I guarantee the girl who said it doesn’t remember it at all, but she made me feel SO awful about myself for weeks afterward. I avoided her as much as possible (which was hard since our gym lockers were near each other).

While I was never thrilled with my body as a teenager, I’m glad I never fell into the trap of starving myself or anything like what Charlie’s mom does. Everyone’s relationship with their body is different, but what Charlie’s mom does to her goes too far, in my opinion. It’s fine that she decided to lose weight, but the fact that she constantly made negative comments about Charlie’s weight and implied that she would be a better person and a prettier person if she decided to lose weight is the result of toxic diet culture and media that constantly bombards us with the idea that skinny=healthy=morally better. I love that Charlie fought against her mom’s ideas because they truly are toxic. Fat doesn’t automatically mean unhealthy and skinny doesn’t automatically mean healthy. People should be allowed to enjoy food without feeling guilty. And I thought that Charlie’s relationship with the body positivity movement was realistic as well (despite what that 1-star review said). It’s amazing that this movement has grown and that more and more people are realizing it’s okay to exist as a fat person despite everything that the media (and maybe people in your own life) tells you. But it’s ALSO hard to internalize that after hearing your whole life that being fat is bad! And that being fat is somehow a physical representation of your morality or something, which is just the dumbest thing ever. It’s still hard for me to remember that sometimes. My body is not a reflection of my worth. It’s just my body. It’s morally neutral. The end.

I’m glad that Charlie was able to deal with some of her insecurities by the end of the book, especially regarding always feeling inferior to Amelia, and that she also voiced those thoughts to Amelia and her mom. It wasn’t fair to Amelia, but I liked that they were able to work through it and that Amelia also showed Charlie how much pressure that put on her and how, while she didn’t experience the same things, Amelia herself was also constantly comparing herself to Charlie for completely different reasons.

I felt like things were left kind of unfinished between Charlie and her mom, but that’s one relationship that wasn’t really going to be fixed with a single conversation. Charlie did address her issues with feeling inferior to Amelia, even in her mom’s eyes, but I think until her mom fully overcomes her own issues with her body image and unlearns all the toxic habits she has internalized from diet culture and all that, her relationship with Charlie and her body are going to keep being iffy. That could be its own separate book, tbh.

The romance in this was very sweet. I liked it, and I really liked Brian. He did seem to be a little too mature and understanding for a teenage boy, but hey, we all need our fictional fantasies. What I did not like was how the blurb made it seem like the romance was the main point of this book, when it was really just one part of Charlie’s journey. 

I really didn’t think this book was going to affect me that much, but I cried several times throughout this. Along with the chest aches, this book was a lot 😮‍💨 It was really good, but I also never want to read it again. (I said the same thing after reading Imogen, Obviously because ouch)

And now that I’ve bared my whole soul for a book review, I’m going to go read something that hopefully has zero effect on me emotionally 🙃