His Curvy Friend

Not a bad story but it dragged slightly and was a bit frustrating with the characters drawn out lack of communication…in some ways their relationship was almost juvenile compared to their grown up activities like sex and jobs. I get why the author wants her books to appeal to larger size girls but the way that reference to the heroines figure are just plopped into the story seem to be token attempts to match it to the curvy girl theme. I think a decent story featuring a curvy girl can be nicely done without emphasizing it as the main theme when it is fact is a romance book with normal everyday regular sized people.

It was pretty good fot a sample! Im even more excited to read the actual book

I can’t tell you how difficult it was reading this book. Books that emphasize a person’s size as a measuring tool for how much they are entitled to be loved feel gross and on the level of self-hate. The self-deprecating self talk she had with herself about how fat she was, how no one could possibly love her and how she was the common denominator for everyone pushing her away was a difficult slog to push through, hoping the book would improve. Especially when she, in fact, is the one doing the pushing away and treating people - and particularly the man who keeps telling her how much he cares for her - terribly. This goes beyond low self-esteem into the sphere of selfish unkindness. Anyone who is not a perfect size 5 should have caution reading this as you may find yourself feeling unlovable, given that thinness and body type is the measurement by which the author keeps telling us determines how much love we deserve. And the main character knows how much commitment someone else is capable of - it’s why she pushed away and rejects the man who has done everything in his command to demonstrate and tell her how much he loves her and wants to be in her life. When the truth is that she stayed in a loveless, easy relationship to pad her own feelings while he stayed single until she became available. The truth is that she was the one acting selfish taking his love and intimacy while not committing, acting cruel, unkind, judgemental, controlling and unloveable. She told the man she professed to love that he was both a liar and unworthy of being loved or being given a chance at love. Come on! Get counselling, seek help, enact the change you need to feel better about yourself - but stop blaming other people for your poor behaviour. Reading that she made him want to cry, to vomit, feeling himself unworthy, is far worse than the ambivalence her ex-boyfriend treated her with. Who acts hot then cold, shutting out a friend and lover for weeks at a time doesn’t make for an empathetic character you want to read about and root for. I want to say “Either accept yourself, take people at their word - do whatever it is you need to do to feel good or at least not make other people fee bad (counselling, put effort into losing weight if that’s what you need to feel better about yourself) - or move on and decide to be lonely. No one deserves to be made to feel like ‘less than’ like that and giving yourself the excuse that it’s because you feel fat is just lying to yourself. That’s how I felt reading the story anyway. On the converse side, his communication skills were not stellar, although when he did communicate, she either didn’t listen to or didn’t believe him - choosing to believe he’s either a liar or incapable of love and commitment. A really great aspersion to cast against someone whom you claim to be a friend to. And while I understand that this may be genuinely how the character felt - rejected, alone, unworthy - much akin to how her alcoholic mother felt, this was a mantra repeated for over 90% of the book (not exaggerating) with static character development. The eventual happily-ever-after felt hollow; almost like you hope for his sake that if he had any self-esteem he wouldn’t take on her brokenness because the future does not look bright with her. I would not recommend reading this if you at all are feeling depressed and looking for a hit of romantic endorphins, or if you in any way have challenges with body weight because you will probably come away from the book feeling worse about yourself.