Fifteen year old Virginia Shreves finds herself floundering through her youth. Her best friend has flown across the country, she’s struggling with body image issues, a family crisis has taken over her life, she’s stopped seeing her kind-of-sort-of-not-boyfriend… everything culminates in a series of destructive behaviours, bold moves, and attempts to find who she truly is.
I thought the book was good… Growing up chunky I could relate a bit to most of Virginia’s problems. Except the whole being super rich part, and scarfing down any food that came at me. (despite my hefty size I don’t generally over-eat.) Anyway, her list, “The Fat Girl Code of Conduct” was something I would have written back in high school:
1. Any sexual activity is a secret. No public displays of affection.
2. Don’t discuss your weight with him.
3. Go further than skinny girls. If you can’t sell him on your body, you’d better overcompensate with sexual perks.
4. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever push the relationship thing.
But I think that overall the novel doesn’t give itself enough room to grow. I think that everything in the book was wrapped up too simply. I don’t think that the struggles of the character were overall written out in a way that was realistic to most readers. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the book. I just think that it was a bit too… structured. Like there is a script for “how to write a teen book for outcast fat chicks”.
I like that the message of the novel is positive. I like that it has a female power and energy to it. I like that it discussed healthy weight loss versus unhealthy weight loss. I like that it touched on self harm and eating disorders. But it didn’t really delve fully into any of these things, just the briefest of mentions. That’s also part of what I liked about it though. As a person who has had issues with: eating, self harming, depression, anxiety, overall bad juju I can say from experience that one day I would be bouncing around the room starting exercise regiments and the next day I would be taking paperclips to my skin and waiting for the pain. I mean, that’s a lot how Virginia is too. She doesn’t always have a consistent method of dealing with her emotions. And I think that’s valid of someone her age in her situation. That being said; there were a lot of stereotypes in this book. Fat kid = unpopular. Popular kid = jerk. Plus, a lack of character development on some of the side characters. I understand that that’s how a lot of high school teen novels are so I’m not condemning it, just pointing it out. I think that the book was good, but it had potential to be great.
Jah Will Provide 