Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a little girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream of being a newscaster—and to kiss the boy she’s crushing on.
Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend. But when it comes to other girls, she’s more frenemy than friend.
When circumstances bring the girls together over the course of a semester, they surprise everyone (especially themselves) by realizing that they might have more in common than they ever imagined.
A story about unexpected friendship, romance, and Texas-size girl power.
Review: This is a companion novel to Dumplin' which I absolutely loved. It is not a sequel but we do get to visit with Willowdean and Bo and it is set in the same town of Clover City and features the same high school, all of which was great news to me! This book centres around two main characters, Millie and Callie who are almost polar opposites of each other. We met them both in Dumpln' and now they are back with their own stories to tell.
Millie is just the most wonderful character to read about. She is so much fun and just exudes positivity and determination so I defy anyone not to fall in love with her and root for her as a character. Her friendship group is also made up of characters that we met in the first novel, people who are somewhat social outcasts at high school but band together to make their own kind of social standing. I just loved that about these girls. One of the thing I also loved about this group is how different all the girls are, this is certainly a novel filled with diverse characters.
Callie is a diverse character herself because she may be pretty and skinny but she is not your typical white, blonde teen that we read about in so many YA novels. She also doesn't follow the rules. I loved the fact that she doesn't follow the rules just as much as I love Millie for following the rules right down to the extent that she doesn't swear. It is fabulous watching these two characters interact because thy are just so different!
As I have mentioned, one of the great strengths of this novel is the fact that it is filled with diverse young women. These women know their own minds and know the difference between right and wrong, even if they don't always choose the path that is right. There is more than one character of size in this novel as well which I was so up for, and they reclaim the word fat, there is a whole discussion about it and how they have reclaimed it and I actually applauded so thanks for that Julie Murphy!
There is some romance in this novel too, the kind of sweet teen romance that just made me want to curl up and gaze at the words on the page and coo over them all. The romance is very light so there is no worry of anything getting too hot and heavy. The friends in this book do talk about sex with one another frankly though, as teenagers do and I really valued their openness and their open mindedness.
In case you can't already tell, I loved this book. I loved the plot and the characters and the diversity of the whole thing. You don't have to have read Dumplin' to enjoy this book but you will be spoiled for that novel if you read this one first, there's still time to enjoy that one before this one though-yey! I wish I had had this novel to read when I was a teen because I can see myself in some of these characters and I am sure you will be able to do the same. I highly recommend this novel, definitely go and pick this up as soon as it is released!
I also made a video covering my thoughts on this book as three others over on my BookTube channel.
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