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A review by heykellyjensen
The Downside of Being Charlie by Jenny Torres Sanchez
2.0
1.5.
Charlie's been the fat boy forever but when he goes to fat camp for the summer and comes home having lost weight, he wants to go after Charlotte, the new girl who he thought he had no chance with before. In addition to that stress is the stress of mom who is far from being sane. She and Charlie's father are on again and off again and now they're off again and she's flying off the deep end.
I didn't buy the voice in this story, and it read very young for me. Charlie didn't sound like an 18 year old but more like a 12 year old, and I felt that many of the story elements themselves read much younger than YA, too. It was much more juvenile than I expected but because of some of the language and some of the other situations, this isn't a book I'd give to a middle grade reader.
I have a hard time with books that tackle weight issues, but I found this one particularly sticky because it's never handled head on. But when it does emerge, the way it's brought up doesn't sit right. First, Charlie admits to wanting to lose weight for Charlotte, not himself. And while that in and of itself isn't a problem, I found those moments when he chose to "comfort eat" false and at times a little cringe-worthy.
To be honest, I was bored with the plot most of the way because little happens. Even when we get to emotionally strong moments, I found myself not really caring. The ending really threw me though, since it was a straight paragraph of Message.
I wanted to like this one, and I think had it been written at the middle grade level, I would have. The male voices didn't sound like high school seniors (and if Charlie's friend used the word "chickie" one more time to refer to a female...) and because of the lack of depth in exploring some pretty tough topics, I was left underwhelmed.
Charlie's been the fat boy forever but when he goes to fat camp for the summer and comes home having lost weight, he wants to go after Charlotte, the new girl who he thought he had no chance with before. In addition to that stress is the stress of mom who is far from being sane. She and Charlie's father are on again and off again and now they're off again and she's flying off the deep end.
I didn't buy the voice in this story, and it read very young for me. Charlie didn't sound like an 18 year old but more like a 12 year old, and I felt that many of the story elements themselves read much younger than YA, too. It was much more juvenile than I expected but because of some of the language and some of the other situations, this isn't a book I'd give to a middle grade reader.
I have a hard time with books that tackle weight issues, but I found this one particularly sticky because it's never handled head on. But when it does emerge, the way it's brought up doesn't sit right. First, Charlie admits to wanting to lose weight for Charlotte, not himself. And while that in and of itself isn't a problem, I found those moments when he chose to "comfort eat" false and at times a little cringe-worthy.
Spoiler
As someone who has struggled my entire life with my weight, books that tackle this issue bother me for a number of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that we rarely, if ever, see a teen character who is overweight being okay with themselves -- I can think of a single instance. And I get why that is, but I don't like when the character suggests they want to change because of a romantic interest. It's not true; it's only one element of a truth. What was particularly bothersome about this instance was that Charlie, who is obviously struggling with self-esteem issues stemming from body image problems, chooses to pick on someone else to comfort himself. Then he wants reader sympathy for his own weight struggle when he hasn't earned that sympathy in the least. I also just found the way he talked about his weight frustrating. When he admits to his father near the end of the book that he "throws up his food," I was further put off by the issue being here at all. It felt thrown in rather than genuinely explored. Maybe, though, what bothered me most about the weight issue not being tackled thoroughly came at the very end, when Charlie equates having problems in life with being fat. Literally, "I see how bottling everything up and stuffing it down can weigh you down" is one of the final lines and belittles the actual problem and makes it into a metaphor. So the reader, who may or may not be bringing their own experiences to the book, walks away actually feeling kind of bad about themselves because they've been packing away emotional problems they don't want to deal with and that's why they're fat? I know that's not what's intended, but that's what it felt like, and it left me uncomfortable.To be honest, I was bored with the plot most of the way because little happens. Even when we get to emotionally strong moments, I found myself not really caring.
Spoiler
I kind hoped Charlie's mom would die since that might have brought more feelings out of me. That she lived disappointed me quite a bit.I wanted to like this one, and I think had it been written at the middle grade level, I would have. The male voices didn't sound like high school seniors (and if Charlie's friend used the word "chickie" one more time to refer to a female...) and because of the lack of depth in exploring some pretty tough topics, I was left underwhelmed.