My rating: ⭐⭐
From the cover:
"Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers - and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: The hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television?
Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition - under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She's in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful anti-fat beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That's it.
But when the cameras start rolling, Bea realizes things are more complicated than she anticipated. She's in a whirlwind of sumptuous couture, Internet culture wars, sexy suitors, and an opportunity (or two, or five) to find messy, real-life love in the midst of a made-for-TV fairy tale. In this joyful razor-sharp debut, Bea has to decide whether it might just be worth trusting these men - and herself - for a chance to live happily ever after."
I was pretty eager to read this one, but it fell flat for me. Spoilers ahead, so beware.
Things get off to a rocky start when toward the beginning of the story, Bea sleeps with her "best friend" WHO IS ENGAGED, and then proceeds to moon over him and whine about how he disappeared after that went down. Uhh yeah, he's very clearly a garbage person, and I officially have zero sympathy for you now that you've somehow managed to convince yourself that you're the wronged party here. Following this, the entire book centers around Bea talking about how closed off she's kept herself because of all the bad things that have happened to her, but literally nothing has happened to her that she didn't do to herself! It was really hard to feel any kind of sympathy for her.
Added to that, for a book that is about body positivity, it's uh...a little rough. Bea spends a significant portion of the book basically being like "I know my body isn't attractive, but I've accepted that and I'm happy." Which...what? She also spends the bulk of her time on Main Squeeze griping about how the guys they chose for the show are people who would never date someone like her, because they're hella attractive and she's *gaaaaasp* fat. Obviously attractive guys don't date women in larger bodies! Bea, you need to watch some fucking Shrill. You're the one with the fat ass and the big titties, so you get to decide what y'all do.
While we're talking about the fatphobia included in a book supposedly celebrating larger bodies, let's talk about the choice to include several excerpts of the truly repugnant shit being said about Bea online. I understand the thought process behind it, but honestly, all women are familiar with the vitriol directed at women by gross men online, and larger-bodied women in particular are intimately acquainted with the awful things some people say to them behind the shield of keyboard anonymity. Do we really need multiple scenes featuring such vile comments? Yuck.
Next up, there were some weird, jarring stereotypes included (in addition to the many, many stereotypes about fat people, which...ugh). For starters, it felt like the author was trying to shoehorn in "diversity," which not only fell very flat but also resulted in shitty generalizations for several of the characters, including three of the four main love interests, her best friend, and the son of one of the love interests. Representation is great when it's good, but this was not it. There was also a lot of reinforcing traditional gender roles, like when her family gets together and the men gather to watch football while the ladies drink wine, because obvi women no likey the sports ball.
Finally, and this is petty, but I have to get it off my chest. Toward the end of the book, Chris Evans makes an appearance. When one of Bea's love interests sees him, he comments that he looks vaguely familiar, but he doesn't know who he is. Perhaps by then I was just thoroughly over this book, but that irritated the shit out of me. He's CHRIS FUCKING EVANS. Even if you aren't a fan, how do you not know who Captain America is? Get out of here with that shit.
Bottom line, if you're looking for a book celebrating bodies of all sizes with a main character who owns her hotness and doesn't let diet culture dupe her into thinking she is somehow less than because she lives in a larger body, look elsewhere. This one isn't going to do it for you.
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