A review by duchess16
Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

3.75

I got a ton of “Eleanor and Park” vibes from this book except I enjoyed this one more. In this book Jack actually has things he’s struggling with. Libby is fat and jack is face-blind. Whereas in eleanor and park, parks only problem is that he’s an underrepresented minority that has never struggled a day in his life. And his only issue was he was dating a fat poor redhead. This one was more believable to me. This one made more sense. It was sometimes cliché (ahem when they first realized they had feelings omggg) but in another sense it wasn’t cliché at all. There was drama and confusion and oh no! He kissed the wrong girl again… and they worked it out. Not like every other teen romance story works issues out tho, they dealt with it like someone (imo) would work it out irl. There was a fair amount of swearing (I suppose it can be expected from public schoolers) so that bumped my rating as I didn’t enjoy it at all. But overall I did fairly enjoy this book. It had a very interesting idea of literally the worlds fattest teen and not just: oH Hi iM oVeRwEiGhT sO mY aUtHoR wRoTe Me As InSeCuRe AnD pEtTy. Ik that’s not how most fat kid novels go but I did mostly enjoy this books perspective. I really felt for Jack through his struggles tho as well. 
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