When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game which lands them in group counselling, Libby and Jack are both angry, and then surprised. Libby several years ago and being a little girl suffered a very great loss in her life, which led her to eat to fill the emptiness of her heart. Feminism is not mentioned at any point in this book, but I feel certain that Libby is a feminist in the making. Jennifer Niven delivers another poignant, exhilarating love story about finding that person who sees you for who you are - and seeing them right back.

Now, Libby's ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for every possibility life has to offer. as for the human race thing, it was never implied that she wasn't human, just that she was ready to go back to school. This certainly was a unique story in many ways, but it didn't feel gimmicky in any way, and there was so much emotion and heart in this story, but it never felt emotionally manipulative. Once dubbed "America's Fattest Teen," when she weighed 653 pounds at her heaviest and had to be cut out of her childhood home while the media watched, she's spent the last two years being home schooled while she recovered.It's my experience that the people who are most afraid are the ones who hide behind mean and threatening words. You’ll read teens who actually sound like teens and have their share of dickish moments and you’ll get to experience a relatable first crush rather than instalove and laugh out loud when Libby says things like: “I want to lean in and get a whiff of him and rest my head on his should or maybe make out with his neck” while slow dancing with a boy. Libby is still a big girl, but she's happy in her skin now - it's everyone else who has the problem. Some of the scenes were very strange (No, high school students do not have random ‘dance parties’ in the middle of detention with their PE teacher. I don't understand how it was even assumed that the author was ridiculing people who deal with weight and mental-health problems.

And the way she stands up to how she's treated, challenges the views of others and impossible beauty standards, it's like her own feminist campaign. I myself am overweight, and while I am nowhere near Libby's size I could easily relate to a lot of what she was going through, even though I am an adult. One of Jennifer Niven’s main points was that people need to look past others’ weight or conditions to see the person underneath, but she seemed to do exactly that by not giving the characters proper personalities. Libby Strout is a girl who never stopped eating for 3 years after her mother died accidentally when she was 10 and she got the reputation of “America’s Fattest Teen” before she was cut out from her house because she was too big to move on her own.

Their worlds collide in a horribly cruel high school game and an unlikely friendship is formed that leads to something even deeper. It would be like someone telling me "Oh, you suffered from epilepsy/seizures for the first eight years of your life, that makes you a freak, so the only person who could ever love or understand you is someone who is just as socially ostracized as you are, and there's no one you can talk about it to, and it's going to keep you messing up in life and you're just going to be miserable until you find love in someone else, because apparently your self-love doesn't exist unless you're with that person . And Libby has to decide whether pursuing everything she wants without worrying about the consequences is actually worthwhile, or if she should just do her best to hide in the background. That seems impossible to me, but I guess this book never was about the reality of the issues it offered up.

I'm sure some readers will see the decision to have such different protagonists as an indication of depth, but I truly feel like this is a very shallow book. It highlighted the real issues wjth society and told a story I was so emmersed in that I read it all in one sitting.If you see me in class today or in the hallways or in the cafeteria or ANYWHERE ELSE ON EARTH, do not talk to me. It was compelling and didn't seem as offensive as the blurb had been, but the more I think about it, the more that doesn't seem to be enough of an excuse for the book as a whole. I’m talking about no structure, nonexistent plot, plain characters, messy storylines, those commonly known as guilty pleasure reads. She is brave, she know how to deal with people who hate her without any reason, she is kind, understanding, helpful and many more things.

However, after seeing a lot of people give it 5 stars – despite all of the problematic aspects I had seen – I decided to pick this book up for the roast. I guess it’s actually from one of Jennifer’s interviews videos on YouTube, where she “dropped” some of her favorite books randomly on the streets, near the telephone booth, or beside a statue in London. but between my moody-blue mood - and this 'nails-on-a-chalk-board' tedious predictable style and structure of writing, I wanted to pull my hair out. It's a book that deserves to be read on its own merit, and although it didn't touch my heart as much as Niven's last book, it still proved Niven's tremendous talent.atbp was one of my favorite reads of last year and the book that got me into reading, the book that fills the first posts of my bookstagram account. She became "The fattest girl in America" and after many therapies and several years of studying from home she goes back to school.