"If you can dream it, you can achieve it".
Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett .

2021 Reread. First read a very long time ago. See review below.

Realistic fiction..heartbreaking fiction.

Triggers..Bullying, overdose, attempted suicide, adultery, fat shaming.

OK..This seems to be a love it or hate it. I really enjoyed this book. It was real, gutteral and can easily break your heart. But I can see how it would not be for everyone.

Lara Ardeche is a beauty contest winner, a student in high school, miss popular and stunningly lovely. Has the world by the tail. What could go wrong?

She gains a few pounds..no big deal right. But then she gains another few pounds..and another..

When Lara first starts gaining weight she is not all that concerned. But suddenly her weight skyrockets out of control..the thing is she is not eating anything more then she always did and she is exercising too. What is happening to Lara?

To say this book is well written does not do it justice. I was so touched by this story and all the people in it. Sometimes when reading YA, it is a struggle because the book feels to (for lack of a better term) "teenage" for me. Not this one. Rarely have I been so moved by a YA book.

Some would argue and have argued that Lara is a cold mean person. That is true or at least certain aspects of her are. Nobody is black and white. We all have shades of gray. That is shown here, not just through Lara but through her family, her boyfriend and her friends.

There IS Fat Shaming here and I warn you it is brutal. But I do not think the author meant to insult overweight people. I think she is trying to show the pervasive effect of bullying. And she chose to do it by showcasing the life of a beauty queen who turns into everything she had once made fun of.

If you will think back to your high school years..ANYONE who was different was bullied. I know many a person who was picked on including myself. Among the issues myself and the people I know were picked on for include:

Weight of coarse BUT..

Glasses

Intelligence..being both to smart or not smart enough

Not having designer jeans

being to quiet

being to talkative

looking "dirty"

Reading to much

crying to easily

Anything and everything else one can think of.

Basically, this book is the opposite of Jemima J, a book I LOATHED and found way more offensive than this one.

But I think if someone has a tough time reading about bullying or teasing they may not like this book because alot of that happens here. So proceed with caution. I was impressed by the fact that the author did not neatly wrap things up as things are very rarely perfect and tidy in reality.

I would give this 4.5 stars. I found it to be an absorbing, deeply moving and well written book. ( )

Preachy book about the perfect girl who inexplicably gains weight. No depth to the characters, long passages of characters telling each other the obvious... pretty bad but I did finish it. ( )

2015 Rating System: 5

This books focuses on a Homecoming Queen who has a rare disease that makes her gain weight even if she doesn't eat. Lara is a 16 and super popular. She's not mean, but she is passive and lets people make fun of others without sticking up enough for them. Her best friend is overweight, but she still loves her. She fines her lazy though because she could control her weight with diet and exorcize. When Lara starts putting on the pounds, she tried everything to get them off. When she can't lose the weight, she goes to the doctor and after several visits learns she has an incurable disease.

Things start to take a turn for the worst when she becomes the fattest girl in school. Even her family blames her for her weigh gain and for embarrassing them. Lara is a sympathetic character, and I did cry several times during this book, but she is still flawed. We get to see her come to accept herself in the final chapter, but she still has a negative view of fat people.

I loved the sub-characters in this book. The true message of the book was delivered through their words. The AIDs comparison said it best. I also liked the story her piano teacher told about the cookie. I laughed so hard I was convulsing on the couch. I also loved Jett. He stuck be her and really did love her. Molly was so sweet. Anyone would be lucky to have her as a best friend.

Other than weight struggles, this book handles family issues as well. It made me think of Naomi and her mom in the new version of 90210 even though this book was written well before that show. The plot line just deepened the story.

In the end, I thought it wrapped up nicely and was definitely a coming of age story where the character is still on her journey at the end of the book. The ending was hopeful and satisfying though. I don't think I'll ever reread this story. It was like a really good Lifetime movie. It pulls on the heart strings because you are discovering things with her, but it wouldn't have the same effect the second time around. Nevertheless, this will be a book that remains a part of my book collection. I would definitely recommend to my teenager if I had one.

I first read this book as a teenager. Recently I stumbled upon it on an online library and was able to borrow it to read again. It was pretty cool to read it again after all these years.

I love the story, I feel it so much. Although, I had trouble taking the main character seriously, when she was all melodramatic about gaining 10 pounds. But as she continued to gain weight, despite efforts not to, I felt more and more empathetic. Although *spoiler* when she broke up with her boyfriend because she thought he didn't want her anymore because of her weight, I feel like she jumped the gun far too quickly. I mean, I am self conscious, but if I had a great guy who wanted to be with me despite how I looked, I wouldn't be so quick to leave him. But I guess I get it, she had always been skinny, and sudden major weight gain would be a shock to her body image. She is kind of that opposite of me, I have never been skinny, yet I felt trapped in the wrong body, and she has always been skinny and unexplicably gained a lot of weight in a short period of time. What I *can* relate to is the frustration of going to extreme measures to lose weight, and still not being able to, and having people assume that you are eating more than you say. Nobody really knows unless they are in that situation. Of course, the metabolic disorder she has is not real, but it acts in a way that my body has behaved, I have gone through periods of starvation, and still managed to lose very little weight and/or maintain.

I would recommend this book for people who have dealt with with issues, bullying, hate, or just those who care about the issues. Also, if you are one of the many unsympathetic types, I would read it to get a feeling for what it would be like to be in the shoes of someone who has to struggle with their weight. People don't "choose" to gain weight, in my experience, most of the time you don't even realize how bad it is until you hit rock bottom, and most of the time there are underlying issues that make it extremely difficult to fix it, and it does not help to have judgemental people talking down/making fun of you.

I would say that this book would be good for Tweens and up. It really depends on the person. I was probably in my mid-late teens when I read it the first time, and now I am 32. I enjoyed it equally both times. I feel it is a story that anyone could relate to on some level. ( )

A few years ago, one of my students borrowed this book from my pile of public library discards and loved it so much that she wrote a really touching letter to the author about how much it affected her. I stumbled across it again and accidentally sat down and read the whole thing. A few hours later, I was wondering why. It's not like it was good, really. It was just SO JR. HIGH. It's like every teeny-bopper book every published POINT. Do you girls remember? It was cheesy, and it was a page turner, and today I gave it to a girl who I knew would love it who has just recently turned into a reader after discovering a collection of novels called Blueford High that I also got for ten cents a piece. So, at least what I got out of what could have been a complete waste of two hours was another title that I can recommend appropriately and even discuss at length with a student.

Shallow girl realizes that her "perfect" life wasn't so perfect. Blah, blah, blah.

( )