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godz_creation's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
5.0
calistacyq's review against another edition
3.0
With meaningful messages but poor writing, Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven is about a girl who is shamed for being fat and a boy with prosopagnosia, otherwise known as face blindness.
Summary: Libby Strout was known as America's Fattest Girl, but she has since lost a sizeable amount of weight. She finally decides to quit homeschooling and enter high school, where she meets Jack Masselin, who secretly has the inability to recognise faces. The two cross paths when Jack does the Fat Girl Rodeo.
Tropes/Genres:
• coming of age
• fat-shaming
• disability (prosopagnosia)
• high school
• young adult
• contemporary romance
• set in Indiana
Review: This book carries plenty of meaningful messages, such as body positivity, but the author failed to express them well enough. I understood their struggles, but I couldn't feel them. The dialogues are awkward, and I think that this is overall an issue with the writing. The ideas are there, but the writing couldn't express them well enough.
One thing I like about this book is how the author isn't encouraging people to stay fat but rather to be kinder and more accepting of larger body types, meanwhile expressing that it is not healthy to be obese. To me, that’s what body positivity truly means. Libby is eager to lose weight, and she is already well on her journey of losing weight – she was 653 pounds at her heaviest – but she faces a lot of bullying for her weight. I simply don't understand how people can think it's okay to make such disgusting remarks towards another human being. This is such an important message to put across.
Libby Strout is fat, but she's also sweet and loves to dance. She’s more than just her size and weight. However, she acts like being fat is her only personality. I get that it may have something to do with her internalising the negative comments considering how vile her attackers were. However, for someone who tries so hard to tackle the stigma against fat people, she seems to emphasise her fatness above all other traits. She tries so hard to make everything about her weight.
She's also obsessed with "[sexing] the rest of this weight right off [her]", which is very weird. Including sexual elements in this book makes it weird. It's not that fat people can't have sex, but it just feels so out of place in this book. Anyway, Libby feels a bit more like a whiny brat than a strong girl. She's supposed to be strong, but there's something about the writing that makes her feel mildly irritating. Libby's character had so much potential but fell flat. I understand her struggles, but I don't feel them. Regardless, I love how Libby's issue is not with her weight but how people were treating her because of her weight. I love how comfortable she is with her own skin while trying to lose weight naturally (not drastically, which can be harmful)! That's such a healthy mindset.
Jack Masselin struggles with undiagnosed prosopagnosia. He seems perfect and is dating one of the most popular girls in school, but he has many personal struggles. His girlfriend, Caroline Lushamp, is not who he fell in love with anymore and also happens to be very mean. Jack is only with her because he believes the sweet girl she was is still inside somewhere, and she is a stable figure to him. While he's supposed to be nice, I just don't feel entirely comfortable about his character. The way he rationalised doing the Fat Girl Rodeo is one of the reasons. He literally assaulted Libby, but somehow it's okay because... I don't know. Yes, he faced some backlash for what he did, but overall, he basically got away with it. Somehow, he even managed to form a romantic relationship with the girl he assaulted. Amazing.
One thing that bothered me about Jack was how he randomly mentioned that his little brother Dusty could be gay. Nobody asked. Like, it's completely irrelevant to the story. It feels like the author just did it to earn a small brownie point from the LGBTQ community. There was nothing in this story that indicated that Dusty could've been gay, so this felt like a weak attempt at representation. I don't know why Jack had to say that Dusty was "almost certainly gay" while describing his traits to readers. What? Let's not even talk about how he basically stole his brother's car without facing any consequences. That being said, Jack feels more like a middle child than an oldest child. It's not just the vibe; his brother Marcus feels older than him.
I wouldn't say Jack is a bad guy, but he certainly has thought and done questionable things. Whatever. It just kind of upsets me how much the author keeps writing irrelevant tokenistic things in this book. It's as if the writing of this book wasn't messy enough – I'll touch on the writing later.
In my opinion, Libby and Jack lack chemistry. I feel that they are better off as friends. There really isn't a need to force romance into every single book. I thought that they made very good friends. Yes, Jack did something unkind to Libby, and his reason for it was a bit stupid, but they became friends after that and learned more about each other. I just don't feel any romantic vibe between the two. They fit so much better as friends!
This book's writing is rather lacklustre, and I'm not basing it entirely on how I feel about it. The dialogues are super awkward, and certain plot points simply don't make sense. There are characters in this book that randomly pop up, and it made me wonder who the heck they were because they were long forgotten and thought to be irrelevant to the story after being briefly mentioned once earlier in the story, if ever. The plot is all over the place. It seems the book doesn't know which direction it wants to take. The writing is, simply put, messy.
The high school portrayed in this book is described to be normal and less like what one sees in Hollywood: there are people with "bad skin and bad hair and good skin and good hair, and [they're] all different shapes and sizes". However, this high school feels a bit Hollywood-esque in terms of the drama. The portrayal of teenagers seems so stereotypical. Trust me: teenagers are not like this. Well, maybe American teenagers are. Who knows? If anything, this seemed more like what one would experience in middle school, not high school. Many younger teens are that oblivious to the consequences of their words and actions, especially given the stage of puberty they are at. It would've been more believable if the characters were in the 12-to-14 age range, but they're 16 to 18. Most older teens are not that immature. Juniors and seniors also have more important things to be concerned about than some random fat schoolmate.
As I mentioned above, this book also briefly mentions some irrelevant things that feel tokenistic, such as when Jack got into trouble and his black mother told him that "it's a fact that our society treats kids of colour more severely than others", a point that wasn't mentioned anymore afterwards. It felt pointless like a weak attempt at pointing out racism that barely exists in this book. By the way, Jack is half-white half-black, which I think it's a great way to naturally include diversity. It's just this part about the non-existent racism that turns me off.
Overall, this book has many meaningful messages, but the writing couldn't evoke much emotions from me, and the characters were kind of weird. If you're interested in a book about body positivity, this is still a great book to receive that message. I'm just mildly disappointed about how indifferent I am towards this book because it failed to draw me in.
Summary: Libby Strout was known as America's Fattest Girl, but she has since lost a sizeable amount of weight. She finally decides to quit homeschooling and enter high school, where she meets Jack Masselin, who secretly has the inability to recognise faces. The two cross paths when Jack does the Fat Girl Rodeo.
Tropes/Genres:
• coming of age
• fat-shaming
• disability (prosopagnosia)
• high school
• young adult
• contemporary romance
• set in Indiana
Review: This book carries plenty of meaningful messages, such as body positivity, but the author failed to express them well enough. I understood their struggles, but I couldn't feel them. The dialogues are awkward, and I think that this is overall an issue with the writing. The ideas are there, but the writing couldn't express them well enough.
One thing I like about this book is how the author isn't encouraging people to stay fat but rather to be kinder and more accepting of larger body types, meanwhile expressing that it is not healthy to be obese. To me, that’s what body positivity truly means. Libby is eager to lose weight, and she is already well on her journey of losing weight – she was 653 pounds at her heaviest – but she faces a lot of bullying for her weight. I simply don't understand how people can think it's okay to make such disgusting remarks towards another human being. This is such an important message to put across.
Libby Strout is fat, but she's also sweet and loves to dance. She’s more than just her size and weight. However, she acts like being fat is her only personality. I get that it may have something to do with her internalising the negative comments considering how vile her attackers were. However, for someone who tries so hard to tackle the stigma against fat people, she seems to emphasise her fatness above all other traits. She tries so hard to make everything about her weight.
She's also obsessed with "[sexing] the rest of this weight right off [her]", which is very weird. Including sexual elements in this book makes it weird. It's not that fat people can't have sex, but it just feels so out of place in this book. Anyway, Libby feels a bit more like a whiny brat than a strong girl. She's supposed to be strong, but there's something about the writing that makes her feel mildly irritating. Libby's character had so much potential but fell flat. I understand her struggles, but I don't feel them. Regardless, I love how Libby's issue is not with her weight but how people were treating her because of her weight. I love how comfortable she is with her own skin while trying to lose weight naturally (not drastically, which can be harmful)! That's such a healthy mindset.
Jack Masselin struggles with undiagnosed prosopagnosia. He seems perfect and is dating one of the most popular girls in school, but he has many personal struggles. His girlfriend, Caroline Lushamp, is not who he fell in love with anymore and also happens to be very mean. Jack is only with her because he believes the sweet girl she was is still inside somewhere, and she is a stable figure to him. While he's supposed to be nice, I just don't feel entirely comfortable about his character. The way he rationalised doing the Fat Girl Rodeo is one of the reasons. He literally assaulted Libby, but somehow it's okay because... I don't know. Yes, he faced some backlash for what he did, but overall, he basically got away with it. Somehow, he even managed to form a romantic relationship with the girl he assaulted. Amazing.
One thing that bothered me about Jack was how he randomly mentioned that his little brother Dusty could be gay. Nobody asked. Like, it's completely irrelevant to the story. It feels like the author just did it to earn a small brownie point from the LGBTQ community. There was nothing in this story that indicated that Dusty could've been gay, so this felt like a weak attempt at representation. I don't know why Jack had to say that Dusty was "almost certainly gay" while describing his traits to readers. What? Let's not even talk about how he basically stole his brother's car without facing any consequences. That being said, Jack feels more like a middle child than an oldest child. It's not just the vibe; his brother Marcus feels older than him.
I wouldn't say Jack is a bad guy, but he certainly has thought and done questionable things. Whatever. It just kind of upsets me how much the author keeps writing irrelevant tokenistic things in this book. It's as if the writing of this book wasn't messy enough – I'll touch on the writing later.
In my opinion, Libby and Jack lack chemistry. I feel that they are better off as friends. There really isn't a need to force romance into every single book. I thought that they made very good friends. Yes, Jack did something unkind to Libby, and his reason for it was a bit stupid, but they became friends after that and learned more about each other. I just don't feel any romantic vibe between the two. They fit so much better as friends!
This book's writing is rather lacklustre, and I'm not basing it entirely on how I feel about it. The dialogues are super awkward, and certain plot points simply don't make sense. There are characters in this book that randomly pop up, and it made me wonder who the heck they were because they were long forgotten and thought to be irrelevant to the story after being briefly mentioned once earlier in the story, if ever. The plot is all over the place. It seems the book doesn't know which direction it wants to take. The writing is, simply put, messy.
The high school portrayed in this book is described to be normal and less like what one sees in Hollywood: there are people with "bad skin and bad hair and good skin and good hair, and [they're] all different shapes and sizes". However, this high school feels a bit Hollywood-esque in terms of the drama. The portrayal of teenagers seems so stereotypical. Trust me: teenagers are not like this. Well, maybe American teenagers are. Who knows? If anything, this seemed more like what one would experience in middle school, not high school. Many younger teens are that oblivious to the consequences of their words and actions, especially given the stage of puberty they are at. It would've been more believable if the characters were in the 12-to-14 age range, but they're 16 to 18. Most older teens are not that immature. Juniors and seniors also have more important things to be concerned about than some random fat schoolmate.
As I mentioned above, this book also briefly mentions some irrelevant things that feel tokenistic, such as when Jack got into trouble and his black mother told him that "it's a fact that our society treats kids of colour more severely than others", a point that wasn't mentioned anymore afterwards. It felt pointless like a weak attempt at pointing out racism that barely exists in this book. By the way, Jack is half-white half-black, which I think it's a great way to naturally include diversity. It's just this part about the non-existent racism that turns me off.
Overall, this book has many meaningful messages, but the writing couldn't evoke much emotions from me, and the characters were kind of weird. If you're interested in a book about body positivity, this is still a great book to receive that message. I'm just mildly disappointed about how indifferent I am towards this book because it failed to draw me in.
aivhfeks's review against another edition
can someone tell me what the old synopsis was? everyone from 2016 was very offended over it and i’m so curious about what it is
catheroni53's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
rebekahrahrah's review against another edition
3.0
I was possibly holding this on too high a pedestal after loving All The Bright Places to pieces a few years ago, but something about this just fell a little flat. It may have been that the passages where characters describe real medical conditions reading a little too much like a passage from a medical textbook or from a blog of someone who does have prosopagnosia. I did still tear through this, despite the ending being obvious from a mile away, but unlike ATBP I won't be rushing back to read it any time soon.
kaulhilo's review against another edition
5.0
❝I say, “I love you.”
She says, “I love you too.” And then she laughs. “It’s kind of crazy. I mean you.”
“I know. What the hell?”
She covers her mouth with one hand, but her eyes are shining. I’m thinking about a field of grass on a summer day. I’m thinking about the sun and being warmed from the inside and being warmed from the outside.
I take her hand under the gray-blue sky and I’m home.❞
This book. Is madness.
She says, “I love you too.” And then she laughs. “It’s kind of crazy. I mean you.”
“I know. What the hell?”
She covers her mouth with one hand, but her eyes are shining. I’m thinking about a field of grass on a summer day. I’m thinking about the sun and being warmed from the inside and being warmed from the outside.
I take her hand under the gray-blue sky and I’m home.❞
This book. Is madness.
carlynugget's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
There was major character development. The two love interests differences got in the way of their relationship, but in the end they worked around them and loved each other regardless.
daeris's review against another edition
4.0
Easy to read, well written, sweet, funny (but not too much)