Author: Jenna Guillaume
Series: n/a
Series #: n/a
Genre: contemporary
Age Group: young adult
ARC?: yes

You know all those movies where teenagers have, like, THE SUMMER OF THEIR LIVES?

This summer is probably not going to be that.

Source: Everything that’s happened since yesterday …

The last thing sixteen-year-old Maisie Martin thought she’d be doing this summer is entering a beauty pageant.

Not when she’s spent most of her life hiding her body from everyone.

Not when her Dad is AWOL for Christmas and her gorgeous older sister has returned to rock Maisie’s shaky confidence. And her best friend starts going out with the boy she’s always loved.

But Maisie’s got something to prove.

As she writes down all the ways this summer is going from bad to worse in her school-assignment journal, what starts as a homework torture-device might just end up being an account of how Maisie didn’t let anything, or anyone, hold her back…


Review

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, I received an eArc of this book in exchange for a honest review.

I feel as if I went into this ready to absolutely love it, and came out of it not sure how to feel. There was just something about this book that I didn’t totally fall in love with. It was a good book, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the five star read I was thinking it was going to be for me.

I’m always looking for the fat girl representation. In a lot of books I feel that the characters are just considered “fat” but are not actually. In this one the girl really is — there are several scenes that really set up she is a big girl — and I really liked those portions because it is so relatable for people like me who struggle to find sizes in stores that don’t look like brown paper bags.

I really appreciated the body positivity in this book — there was nothing in it that made me annoyed at that type of representation. There was quite a bit of diversity in this book, and I was pleased with that.

As I read this I felt just a bit disconnected at times, and I can’t quite put my finger on why that was. There was something that wasn’t there for me.

Other things I liked in this book were the descriptions of friendship, and how there are struggles and happiness.

As someone who went through a friendship situtation/body issues as a teenager, I really felt for Maisie. I could really connect with those feelings. Unlike Maisie however I have not met a friend who is so body positive.

The book was really about her journey over the course of a summer, and it was written in diary form. I think that was what really made me pause — I was having issues with the formatting of the diary, and it felt at times disconnected.

Overall, I think this was a light, fluffy read that a lot of people are going to enjoy!