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bookwyrm25 's review for:

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke
0.25

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE RECOVERING FROM AN EATING DISORDER OR DO NOT LIKE CONSTANT REMINDERS OF EARLY 2000'S EXTREME DIET CULTURE. SKIP THIS BOOK, IT'S SATURATED WITH NEGATIVE WAYS TO LOSE WEIGHT AND TALK ABOUT BODY IMAGE!!

Reasons I read this book: I thought if I tried hard enough to get through the early 2000's misogyny I'd get to the "good parts" everyone seems to rave about.

What this book had:
*Early 2000's extreme diet culture (
in the end hannah just put on the wrong pants and put herself through a horrible diet that resembles an ED for nothing

*Ableism (AKA because the character had an intellectual disability he wasn't allowed to be interested in dating women his age or getting a truck and had to be manipulated by the ex con. There's now way he had these interests all on his own apparently!!!)
*Typical the person who went to jail did it (
and of course he was the murderer
) stereotype
*Misogyny again but less mention of it due to the excessive diet talk in every other paragraph (I'm not even kidding, it was constant and gave me flashbacks to my ED)
*Unlikable romantic interests that see Hannah as lesser than because she's a woman and her "hobby" of finding out literal murderers when the police should be doing it is just a cute little quirk and not actually impressive to them


What this book DIDN'T have:
*A good plot, believable or not
*An entire page without body shaming
*An entire page without diet talk


Overall obviously I'm not seeing why these books are so well loved. They're not good and have so many issues with them. I guess I just need a break from this series before I lose my mind.

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