Thank you Walker Books for this book in exchange for an honest review
Synopsis:
Sophomore year has just begun, and Angie is miserable. Her girlfriend, KC, has moved away; her good friend, Jake, is keeping his distance; and the resident bully has ramped up an increasingly vicious and targeted campaign to humiliate her. An over-the-top statue dedication planned for her sister, who died in Iraq, is almost too much to bear, and it doesn’t help that her mother has placed a symbolic empty urn on their mantel. At the ceremony, a soldier hands Angie a final letter from her sister, including a list of places she wanted the two of them to visit when she got home from the war. With her mother threatening to send Angie to a “treatment center” and the situation at school becoming violent, Angie enlists the help of her estranged childhood friend, Jamboree. Along with a few other outsiders, they pack into an RV and head across the state on the road trip Angie’s sister did not live to take. It might be just what Angie needs to find a way to let her sister go, and find herself in the process
Review:
Fat Angie punched me in the heart.
Legit, a massive closed fist directly to the heart.
It was brutally awesome!
I love books that have a great deal of emotion in it, a lot of pain and a great deal of hope. This needs to happen more in my opinion. There are way too many fairy tales stories, even in contemporary that everything works out perfectly for the characters. These are the kind of books were nothing bad happens to them, their family and friend life is completely happy. But as we all know LIFE IS NOT LIFE THIS!
Our main character Angie literally has life rolled her down a rocky hill and she stumbles and picks herself up, brushes the dirt of her knees and keeps on going.
What life throws at Angie:
– Her ex is moving away
– Her friends being distant and hardly speaking to her
– Her sister dies while being a hero and serving her country
– Bullying
– Mental illness
– Panic attacks
– Her mother is the female version of Satan
See what I mean? Life isn’t in Angie’s favour, and its raw realistic and AMAZING!
Oh Should I mention that she gets a postcard from her sister after finding out she has died? Fist to heart moment right there.
Honestly I count myself lucky that I haven’t had a life like Angie’s but I know soo many people that have had a life just as cruel if not worse. The importance of contemporary’s shining a light on these subjects this heavily should be done more often. It is rare to find a book like this. I feel as though in today’s society there are people who have no idea that life can be this cruel and those that broke a nail thinking that their life is over. Obviously there are other categories of humans as well but let’s focus on these two for a minute. Without books like Fat Angie, they probably wouldn’t have a realisation that the world is harsh and the need it.
You see our characters grow on the road trip and you see Angie, almost escaping reality at moments while she tries to wrap up the messy burrito that is her life. The cards are on the table and she just has to pick which ones she wants to have in her deck. Will she make a stand for herself?
Though everything about this book was a massive tick for me, I wasn’t overly impressed with the writing style, and at moments thought that the tone of the book could have been written differently to aid the story. Nothing against the writer, obviously, but it just didn’t match the book itself.
Overall this is a cute little read and I highly recommend that people read and embrace this book and the story it provides, just get ready to be punched in the heart.
Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 9780763693459