Review // Big Bones by Laura Dockrill

Published: 8th March 2018
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Format: Kindle
Synopsis: A heart-warming teen story from the unique voice of Laura Dockrill, about Bluebelle, aka BB, aka Big Bones - a sixteen-year-old girl encouraged to tackle her weight even though she's perfectly happy, thank you, and getting on with her life and in love with food. Then a tragedy in the family forces BB to find a new relationship with her body and herself. Moving, memorable and hilarious.

There has been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about this one, and rightly so. Laura Dockrill's Big Bones is the first book i've read since Dumplin that focuses on larger girls and body positivity. I would have LOVED all of this new focus on body positivity whilst I was growing up and it's so important that we get this right for our future generations. However maybe it's a little late for me now.

As much as I LOVED the idea of Big Bones and the pitch behind it, I felt like the book itself didn't quite meet my expectations. I thought it would actually be written in a diary-like style but it was just blocks of texts with the heading of a food. It took a long time (too long, honestly) for me to realise that the actually 'diary' part wasn't going to come.

I also didn't find those bites of humour that were promised to me in other reviews and comments from friends. Did I miss something? I found it to be quite heavy given the context of the book and any attempts at humour just flew right past me I guess. I feel like this review is a bit of a downer and it shouldn't be. I DID enjoy the book for what it was, it's just I massively feel like i've missed something compared to other reviews. It wasn't an eye opening masterpiece for me.

The romance was disappointing too. It wasn't necessary and felt like it was only there to scream 'fat girls can be loved too!!!!1!' - nobody wants that. As a fat girl myself, I *know* fat girls can be loved, beautiful, smart, independent etc - being fat has literally nothing to do with any of that and it was a little condescending to have this pointed out in a book about body positivity.

It was however a very quick read, I got through most of it in-between bits and pieces at work. It was interesting and will appeal to a lot of girls out there and I think Big Bones is going to go far in the book world - it just didn't hit the right notes for me.