Reviews tagging 'Fatphobia'

Always, in December by Emily Stone

6 reviews

hannahglenn's review

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emotional sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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mmariericker's review

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emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This book was disappointing. I didn’t connect with the characters or the love story, Josie is written as a really weak woman, the ending is a cop-out and it’s mildly fatphobic at times.
Max just drops dead, which I saw coming, but wtf? And at the same time, their relationship was so shallowly written it wasn’t gut wrenching like it should’ve been.
Josie really did most things only if she had to or if a man encouraged her to and I did not like that. 

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elenatamsen's review

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emotional funny sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5


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thatfella's review against another edition

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sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5


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anaodaniel's review

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

This book is horribly ableist, and has a nasty undercurrent of fat phobia. The take home message seems to be that sick people serve no other purpose than to inspire healthy people to live better lives. The writing is quite honestly terrible. How nobody on the editorial team thought to flag the fact that the term “so and so huffed out a breath”, is beyond me. I am not exaggerating when I say that the phrase must appear over 100 times in a 400 page book. 

I was hoping this book would be a meaningful look at grief, and holiday related grief in particular, but even that aspect was shallow and poorly developed. If you’re hoping for a less traditional Christmas read, skip this one. It’s not worth the terrible writing and the even worse content. 

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krilves's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Not a romance and frankly I’m pissed off because this was shelved with romance and I picked it up believing it would be a romance. There’s no HEA. Max fucking DIES at the end.

I had several other problems with this:
- tropey in a way that had characters behaving as if they were puppets. There’s a difference between tropey stuff happening and characters behaving counter to how they actually would just to make the trips happen.
- Straight with a capital S. Not because of a lack of queer characters (the one gay guy in the book was a minor character with barely any lines except to make it obvious he was gay) but because of how heteronormatively focused it was on how “the other girl” was prettier/had longer legs/whatever than herself because his forbid men like them for their personalities, or something 
- fatphobia. There is one singular fat character in this book and he existed only to be gross and disgusting because of his size. His ‘inappropriate’ behaviour was also emphasised through his fatness - frankly, if he’d been thin his behaviour wouldn’t have been anything much to comment on but no, let’s just make the fat person disgusting for no reason.

Besides all of that I thought it kind of ok. I guess people who enjoy having their hearts torn out and tramped on with no satisfying healing to follow up with would enjoy this. I don’t. I can’t in good conscience recommend it to anybody - the fatphobia alone made sure I would never recommend this book to anyone - but also I’m just too bloody mad. I could tell something was going on with Max and I was wondering what secret/burden it was going to be - had he had a mental health breakdown? Had he been assaulted? Had he lost an unborn child? Had he been sexually assaulted? I did not expect “inoperable brain tumour” or him just dying out of the blue. And maybe I should’ve picked up on it but I haven’t read this type of novel in so long that I must’ve forgotten what the conventions are like, and did I say, this was shelved as fucking romance so I expected it to be a fucking romance.

I’m going to bed.

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