Thank you so much to Random House for the eARC of this book!
Thank you so much to PRH Audio for the complimentary audio!

This book is out now.

If you are looking for a love letter to Pennsylvania, this book may be for you!

I appreciated the sense of community in this book and the feeling of living with other people and the complications that can come from that. I appreciated her diverse characters especially Leah. I love seeing their type of body being described in the book. They had a quote that really stood out to me: "Do you think it's people's eyes or their brain that makes them hate fat people?" In which Bernie replies, "Brain. There's nothing wrong with our eyes." That whole section was a dagger to the heart. Bernie was also an interesting character as she is the woman in a crossroad of her life where she doesn't know what she wants to do. She is this talented photographer but the mentor who taught her everything was not a good person. She has these conflicted feelings on if she proceed with these skills from this man.

I loved the chapter taking place in Lancaster, PA. My husband and I love traveling to our neighboring county and it really is such a beautiful area! And even though I have seen the Amish just about every time I take a trip there, I am still fascinated by them & their culture. I am not sure if the interaction with the Amish kid would happen but I guess it could? Of course selfishly I would have loved a stop in my town of Reading, PA but maybe in another book.

This book is written from a perspective of someone looking into the lives of these people specifically Bernice and Leah. And it did not occur to me until much later in the book that this was the case.

I have not written anything by Emma before. I know that she also writes articles for publications which I am interested in looking some of the pieces she wrote about the lack of fat characters in books (she's not wrong). The way that Emma writes was just so beautiful. Her description to the characters & the setting really helped placed the scene. This book does not have quotations mark so if that is something you're not into or haven't tried, just be warned.

I paired the audio of this book and queen Marin Ireland. She made the listening experience so easy and was able to change the different tones to match the character.

I recently got to see Emma at a bookstore in Lancaster and the way she speaks is so eloquently. And the repore with the owner was so enjoyable and I felt like I learned a lot about the process of making this book and the deeper parts that in retrospect made a lot of sense. And it actually wanted me to go back and re-read to catch all the things that they talked about and see it from this new lens.

I love that this was written about a real life couple whom is lost in history. I had no clue that Bernie was based off a real photographer, Bernice Abbott. I love when author's find these people who were impactful in their life but are not known.