This book had more heart and heft than I expected it would, honestly, but it's an odd novel ... and after reading a few other reviews, I realize I'm not the only one who thought so. The first half is fairly standard chick-lit--a young woman protagonist overcomes her personal challenges to become a successful plus-size instagram influencer and begins to reconcile with her troubled, former mean-girl/BFF from high school. Then, at the half-way point, there's a death, and the book suddenly becomes a whodunnit mystery. The characters transform into intuitively capable amateur detectives, the pace picks up, and we're sped along to a conclusion. It didn't quite work for me, partly because many of the insights about our fat-shaming, diet-obsessive culture (while enlightened) didn't feel fresh or original to me, as I think Weiner intended; bestselling author Geneen Roth was writing about these issues, in very similar language to what Weiner uses, back in the 1990s. The message seems to be that our bad deeds come back to haunt us, and parental love makes the difference ... maybe a bit too pat? However, it was a quick, easy read, one day for me.
