This book is very inspiring. So much so it has inspired me to incorporate daily journaling and gratitude journaling into my life. Tara is so relatable to me, a millennial navigating my late 20s. Trying to figure out what makes me happy, and what doesn't. There are so many good nuggets of wisdom. A little "do as I say" at times, but overall so good.

A queer, high school romance with DRAG! Pumpkin is a beautiful story set in small town Texas at a high school that has a surprising amount of queer students. Pumpkin tells the tale of a high school senior finding his way in life, separate from his twin sister. This book is so good and you won't want to put it down. 

This book is an interesting take on conversation, with a jumping off point from the author sharing questions from her young son. Tough questions. Questions that aren't easy to answer. Mira takes us through her life as an Indian American, navigating the Trump era, endless racism, and tensions over politics. 

I listed to this on audiobook and it was fantastic. A truly amazing story that will make you angry at points, yet hopeful in a way. 

 

In this book, Aubrey highlights all the (many) ways our society is built to be fatphobic and thin-centered. We are conditioned from birth to be anti-fat, pro-thin. Throughout the book, Aubrey explains how this has happened. And that fatphobia is completely pointless and does no good. In case you are reading this and didn’t know, fat is not inherently bad. Every body is different - fat isn’t always a choice, some people are just fat! So much plays into it, including genetics. 

 

This book made me so angry at times - at the way fat people are treated. At some experiences I’ve shared with Aubrey. At the ignorance of people, especially medical professionals. 

 

I need everyone I know to read this book. Or at least listen to Aubrey’s podcast The Maintenance Phase if books aren’t your thing. We need more fat activists like Aubrey in the world. And - just as importantly - we need more people to read books like this. 

 

I wrote down so many quotes, but here are two  of my favorites: 

 

“We can build a world that doesn’t assume fat people are failed thin people, or that thin people are categorically healthy and virtuous.” 

 

“Fat hasn’t become a bad word because fatness is somehow inherently undesirable or bad – it has fallen out of public favor because of what we attach to it. We take fat to mean unlovable, unwanted, unattractive, unintelligent, unhealthy. But fatness itself is simply one aspect of our bodies – and a very small part of who each of us is. It deserves to be described as a simple and unimportant fact.” 

Thank you to NetGalley and BenBella books for the advanced review copy of this book

I want to start this review by saying the intended audience for this book is queer BIPOC. Dalia is a pansexual, genderqueer, black Registered Dietician. And Dalia created this book that the anti-diet/Health at Every Size (HAES) community needed. And while I am not the intended audience for this book, I am so glad I was able to read it and learn so much from it.

I have read several books centered on anti-diet/HAES topics, so some of the information presented in this book was not new. Yet, I still learned so much. Dalia focuses on how the colonization of wellness has disproportionately excluded marginalized communities (e..g, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folks). Fatphobia disproportionately focuses out BIPOC as compared to white cis people. One thing I found interesting was when Dalia details how microaggressions contribute negatively to a person’s health.

“Policing the behavior of marginalized folks under the guise of protecting them is a symptom of white supremacy, not a legitimate public health intervention.”

There are reflection/journaling prompts throughout that are so good. This book is so well written. Dalia uses personal examples and examples from others to provide context. Dalia covers everything from joyful movement to reshaping how your relationship with food to self love.

This book was a call-in for me to reflect on how I think and have privilege in healthcare spaces, even as a fat person, because I am white.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Whether you’ve read many #AntiDiet books or you’ve read none. This is a book the world needed.

Jet being a rockstar in this was a nice mix-up to the primarily sports players characters thus far in the series. It was fun to see the sports and music worlds collide. I love both Jet and Soren, so this one was so good to me. Their age difference (10ish years) was mentioned A LOT, and it kind of made their romance a little weird for me. It got better towards the end, but felt like that was an unnecessary plot point towards the beginning. 

This is one of my favorites in the series. This friends to lovers got to me! It tugged on my heartstrings. The two main characters in this one were so likable. I could truly feel their struggles and turmoil. Again, a wonderful MLM romance from Eden! 

Probably my favorite in this series! I loved Lennon and his dorky journalist self. The love story in this one is just so cute. What's cuter than meeting in a bathroom? I do not understand hockey at all, but loved this MLM romance!

Gay! Sports! Love! Steam! All of these make for the perfect combination. But don't fret, the sports aspects are only that the characters play sports. There's no detailed scenes of sports games or plays. 

All the fake dating in this series is so well done. Aside from the mentions of toxic masculinity and homophobia from side characters, I love this book. It definitely made my heart glow. 

This book got me in the feels. Truly. 

This story is so sad, yet so beautiful. I have not ever read a story with an incarcerated mother, so this was very interesting to read. The story was wound together perfectly. The characters were so complex yet easy to know from the reader standpoint. Ledger, the male love interest, was so swoon-worthy. 

This is a tear-jerker for sure!