Picture Perfect by Alessandra ThomasMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cat, a college student and former model, suffered a horseback riding accident, and was laid up for 10 months with surgeries, PT, steroids, and in that time, managed to gain 60 pounds. She is no longer comfortable in her skin anymore, and is suffering from some very emotional body dysmorphia. I started out with the book a little jaded - oh, boohoo - you are a gorgeous college student who is tall and a size 12. What drew me in was Cat's pain in her recovery - physical pain, not emotional. It wasn't just that she was now a heavier version of herself, but that her wounds, surgeries, and scars even prevented her from even trying to get back to her former self, so she needed to learn to love the body she has now. She starts seeing a therapist, who sets her on a couple of tasks of body acceptance, the first of which was to pose nude for an art class. She meets a young man with previous body issues of his own, and the two of them fall into a whirlwind relationship. I am not entirely happy with how the book ended - I felt the therapist's role in the story was sort of cut at the end, and it seemed to me the book ended abruptly. This book was a little difficult for me to read. As a plus size woman myself, some of the things that Cat went through in the book - especially that issue of someone only being interested in you when he is drunk, really struck home and I found myself crying at points while reading the book. I wished more of Cat's friends had been accepting of her new form - her friend, Joey, was a goldmine - but seems that many of her other sorority sisters stepped back and didn't seem to care what she was going through.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment