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Apr 14, 2018noraboumaraf rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
In Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy, Willowdean Dickson, who describes herself as a”fat girl”, struggles in her beauty-pageant-obsessed town with her body image. Will spends her life with her mother and best friend, who were both conventional beauties, and related only to her aunt Lucy, who died of a heart attack before the book began. She begins the novel as a girl who is fairly comfortable in her own skin, but has moments when she feels abnormal. She then hits it off with a boy she thinks is extremely attractive and has the time of her life with him, but with one major downside: when she's with him, she feels insecure, but she doesn't see why she should feel that way. She joins the ever-popular beauty pageant in Clover City, which her beauty queen mother runs, to prove to the town and most of all, herself, that anyone can be a beauty queen. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the novel moderately, seeing as this kind of book is not exactly the type of thing I usually read. It was a good contemporary novel and dealt with a spectrum of body image issues, focusing on weight. Such issues are very prevalent today, and I think it's safe to say that most people, regardless of age, race or gender have experienced them at one point or another. The author did a wonderful job of mixing in familial and relationship conflicts without necessarily making them central but rather focusing on Will’s internal struggles at the beginning, but they later bled into the struggles of other girls, morphing them into a shared issue. I believe that more realistically these types of issues are not shared with other people and remain within oneself. I was also left with many questions at the end, but I felt that the outcome of the sequence of events itself was unpredictable and suited the characters themselves. I thought it was a nice change from the usual traditional beauties who star in most books aimed at the teenage demographic redefines beauty standards as ridiculous and unimportant rather than something to actively strive for in order to live a complete life. Just a little heads up, the book contains a substantial amount of cursing and romance, so if that bothers you a whole lot I suggest you keep away. I recommend this for people who are looking for a book that deals with such internal struggles as well as family, friendship and relationship issues. I also highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys contemporary novels.