Life got in the way this week, and we didn’t have a review to run today, so please enjoy this repost from my basically defunct personal blog. I lovingly copied and pasted it just for you, because I care.

This is a short little novella so there’s not a ton to discuss. It’s a girl-carries-a-flame-for-her-older-brother’s-friend story featuring a curvy heroine and a muscular hero, but the story is almost inconsequential. The beauty of this book is in the telling.

It’s told in first-person present tense from the heroine’s point of view, which I typically loathe. Stein, however puts on a clinic for How It Should Be Done. The heroine’s personality is front and center, pouring from the little asides and stream of consciousness. You feel all of her emotions along with her as she puzzles them out with the reader. Occasionally she breaks out in Pratchett-like lists, at one point making me break out in hysterical laughter in the middle of some seriously hot sexual tension:

c) There is something pressing into the small of my back, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t a tube of Rolos. And if it is, he really needs to tell me where he bought such an enormous packet.

I love Rolos.

I will add a caveat or a content note to this, as it deals with fat in a way that some people might find problematic.

Early in the story, Steven, the hero, tells a story using a lot of fat-phobic and fat-shaming language:

‘So I picked up this cute little fat chick,’
…
‘And I mean, she was a big girl. I could hardly get my arms around her waist.’
…
‘And her arse … Man, her arse was the size of a small planet.’
‘But the best part was these thighs she had … These big, billowing thighs.’
‘It was like an avalanche of flesh, on top of me. At one point, I was genuinely afraid for my life – one false move and I could have been crushed.’
…
‘But then it turned out that she was a total maniac who liked to eat paint. Thank God she was heavy … I didn’t have to run all that fast to get away from her.’

The heroine, being fat (“Anything over a size two would likely make the grade, in his eyes, and I passed that stage around 12 levels ago. You could times his ideal size by seven and still not get where I’m at.”), naturally takes offense at his language and blows up, effectively telling him to go fuck himself. Now, he’s immediately sorry he’s hurt her feelings, and I think a later conversation gives his comments some context that make them more about the girl he’s disparaging than a dig at fatness, but YMMV.

I liked how body image was used in the story, for the most part. I thought Judy was insecure about her body without ever drifting into self-loathing. She frequently frets about Steven’s opinion of her body, but seems to also view his potential rejection as his own damn problem, and not a measure of her self-worth. The story also seems to avoid the common “a man loves your body, therefore you’re lovable” pitfall I often see in fat romance. It does a good job of showing that Steven’s attracted to Judy in particular, and that’s the source of his affinity for a curvy woman (‘I really like curvy girls.’ He pauses, right before the kicker. Then he delivers it, with all the punch he can muster. ‘Probably because of you.’)

I am, as many of you know, skinny as a toothpick, and really haven’t got any experience with “extra” weight, so if you read this differently, I’m all ears.

Final Assessment: If this were an HFN rather than an HEA, I’d give it five stars. The emotion and passion was just completely awesome and the narration was pitch-fucking-perfect. I just thought the ILYs at the end felt rushed and unnecessary. B+

Brenda Hampton’s Who Ya Wit’ 3 makes up the first half of Carl Weber Presents Full Figured Plus Size Divas 5. I have a lot to say about Who Ya Wit’ 3 so I’ll leave the second story of the anthology for a later review. After a number of Kindle samples that didn’t compel me to read more, it was almost a surprise when Brenda Hampton caught my attention. While Who Ya Wit’ 3 is part of an ongoing series, I had no difficulty following the storyline. Dez, a forty something single mother of two, is in and out of a difficult relationship with the younger Roc. The respectability politics at play between them seem to impact them more than the age difference.

Dez is very frank with her sexuality. (While the content is low overall, it’s very direct.) Dez is a woman who has sex when she pleases, with whom she pleases. She knows what she wants and asks for it bluntly. Dez also harshly judges the sexuality of others. Her first marriage ended when her husband was unfaithful, something she is still very damaged by. There is a married character who is serially unfaithful. Dez has an extremely low opinion of him and his lovers. When Dez thinks her son may be considering an affair she blames all three parties. Yet Roc has multiple sexual partners. Dez pursues Roc while he is living with his pregnant girlfriend. She does not consider herself to be trash nor Roc a cheat and neither does anyone around her. The dividing line appears to be marriage.

A romance novella with a plus-size model and by plus-size we mean real life plus-size, not fashion world plus-size? I’m sold. When can I read the book? The second I win it from a BookLikes giveaway it appears. Writing the actual review is a bit harder, because I didn’t end up liking it very much.

Some spoilers ahead.

There were moments. There were good moments and scenes I liked. I liked that Tom and Hattie actually talked to each other—not when it mattered but they did get to know each other on the page. I liked Hattie’s attitude towards her own body even when she was faced with well meaning but undoubtably cruel remarks from her own mother. I liked the idea, but unfortunately the execution lacked finesse.

My biggest problem was that in her attempt to make clear that Tom the photographer was attracted to Hattie physically, the author over-emphasised it. Tom’s thoughts about her curves and full breasts made him sound more like a chubby chaser than a man turned on by Hattie’s personality and body. I get that it’s prudent to remind the readers they’re not dealing with a romance cardboard cutout heroine size extra small, but when it starts to hamper my ability to view the character as a functioning human being with dreams and aspirations, you’ve gone too far. Fat people don’t need to think about their weight all the time; we’re constantly reminded of it in our interactions with the rest of the world. Keeping it at that—at the jibes from Hattie’s mother, the random people looking through an overweight person, and the practical observations of living with a gut and a cupsize bigger than a DD—would’ve sufficed for the book too.