Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado

 Hey Everyone!

I finished another book! I'm on a serious roll, and I don't want to lose my momentum!  Three books in April, so far!  That's crazy, unheard of for me, in the last few years.  I'm really excited, to have possibly gotten out of this long a** reading slump I've been on for way too long! 

And I finished a NEW Book!  Like from this year!!!  I know crazy, right?! 😄

I finished Crystal Maldonado's debut novel, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, which came out in February.  

From Goodreads:

Coming of age as Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard.  Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.

Charlie Vega is a lot of things.  Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one.  Especially her mom.  Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it's hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn't help.  The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter haired.  Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But there's one person who's always in Charlie's corner: her best friend Amelia.  Slim. Popular. Athletic.  Totally dope.  So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing -- he asked Amelia out first.  So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her?  UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS.

A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

My Thoughts: 

I really enjoyed this one!  I, first off, finished it in less than two days.  Started it Saturday evening, and finished it this morning.  And second, it's about a plus-size girl, which is a subject I'm always interested in, because I feel like we rarely get the happily-ever-after in books.  

Charlie's relationship with her body, her best friend, her mom are all very relatable.  I also really loved that she fell for the slightly pudgy guy!  That also, I feel rarely happens!  

I will say this, and since it's already in the description of the book, it isn't a spoiler.  The way Charlie finds out that Brian had asked Amelia out previously to asking her out?  I would not have been as forgiving as Charlie was to the person who told her that, as that person was trying to be absolutely disgustingly spiteful.  But Charlie was just a really kind person in general.  She would have inner dialogues happening in her head where she think something not so nice about someone around her, and then chastise herself for thinking that.  

Overall Rating:

I really enjoyed this one,  but the only reason I didn't give it five, is because near the beginning there were times where the author wrote out emoticons...like she write out the words, not have the actual emoji, and I'll be honest I didn't care for that. It did luckily stop happening about 1/3 of the way into the book! I know that's probably being knit picky, but it is what it is. 

Definitely check this one out!  I saw it reviewed on Instagram and knew instantly it sounded like something that would interest me!

The Romance Bookie :)