Monday, November 17, 2008

Book Review: This Book Isn't Fat, It's Fabulous by Nina Beck

Riley Swain is a Manhattan rich kid full of self confidence and snark. But while her friends spend break on the senior trip to Mexico, Riley’s being sent by her father and step-monster to an upstate fat camp. Obviously she doesn’t want to go – if she’s comfortable with her full-bodied curves, then why can’t everyone else be?

Before you dismiss this as yet another novel preaching the old mantra of loving yourself the way you are – too thin, too fat, too whatever – consider that Riley is one of the coolest characters I’ve come across in YA lit AND she has a romance at camp (with the headmistress’ son Eric no less) that is so authentically sweet it made me positively giddy (and trust me, that doesn’t happen often).

Riley is a bit self-involved and queen bee bitchy at the start of the novel and her Manhattan frenemies are varying degrees of annoying, but while camp may or may not slim her waistline, it certainly does give her time to develop real relationships with her mousy roommate Samantha and the aforementioned Eric as well as a big heart.

Not only did I have fun reading this book, I had a big old goofy smile on my face at the end. Go Riley!

This Book isn’t Fat, It’s Fabulous is out now in hardcover.

8 comments:

Lenore Appelhans said...

P.S. This is my 100th book review published to my blog! (granted some of them were quite short during the 48 hr readathon - but still quite a milestone.)

Linda said...

Lenore, you've been tagged. Check out my blog.

Alea said...

Congratulations on 100 reviews!

Lenore Appelhans said...

Thanks Alea! Can't believe it's already been so many...

Steph said...

Woooo 100! Go you! :D

Interesting - I could go for the title if the cover weren't so ... um ... I don't know how to put this. Let's skip right over it.

Good review, L - not my type of thing because I'm so very picky with these types of books, but I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Steph

nadine said...

Congratulations. Sounds like you picked a great one for your 100th.

=)
TruBlu

Unknown said...

This book actually DOES sound fabulous to me...I'm going to check it out. Thanks for the tip (why haven't I heard of this one before? Oh yeah, I've been buried under a pile of books and deadlines!)--and congrats on the big 1-0-0! xo

juliethree said...

Again, I love the fact that this book shows a 'curvy-not-fat' girl who gets a guy! Most of the books always revolve around a bigger bodied girl getting rejected and never having a boyfriend! How stupid.

I am trying to find your science/fantasy fiction section here to see if "Rowan of the Wood" is included.