I’ve been looking out for more YA contemporary books about fat girls… Or even girls who aren’t comfortable with the size of their body or how they look. Because, I’m one of those girls, so I’m always on the lookout for good representation of this in YA. I’d heard a lot about Big Bones throughout the blogosphere and I was interested to see whether it was the type of book that I was looking for, so I decided to request a copy and see what I thought.

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.

To be honest, I have no idea what I think of this book. Part of me thinks that it was an enjoyable read, but then part of me thinks that it was just strange and it did take me a very long time to read. This is actually quite strange for me because contemporaries take me a matter of hours to read, but I think that I was reading this for about a few weeks? Or something like that, anyway.

When I was talking about this book in one of my wrap up videos, I felt like I couldn’t explain my thoughts about this book in a very cohesive way, and I think that’s because I liked it… And I didn’t like it…

“I don’t mean to scare myself but leaving school is like leaving the womb for the second time.”

― Laura Dockrill, Big Bones

As aforementioned, this book is about a girl who identifies as fat. One day, she goes to the doctors for her monthly weigh-in, and the doctor says that Bluebelle has to lose some weight and really look after herself. Bluebelle then strikes up and agreement with her Mom. Her Mom says that is Bluebelle goes to the gym and keep a food diary for the doctor, then Bluebelle can drop out of school and start an internship.

The concept of the book is very interesting, but I don’t think that it was executed in a particularly amazing way. During the first.. 10% of this novel I really wanted to DNF it. For the first 70% of the novel, it was just Bluebelle keeping her food diary and not really doing anything exciting. It wasn’t until AFTER this 70% point that she started looking after herself. There was also the problem with the CHARACTER of Bluebelle. She she was funny at first because she was so confident in who she was and she didn’t care what other people thought of her, but then as the story carried on, she started to become really annoying and I found her to be quite unlikeable.

“People look at bigger people and assume we shouldn’t feel the need to ever get hungry because we have enough fat stored up to last us until our dying day. As if we can nibble off our sides like we’re made of peach.”

― Laura Dockrill, Big Bones

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Dove (Bluebelle’s sister), who is just amazing. She does parkour and is so brave. She has brilliant banter with Bluebelle which gives them such a nice relationship to read about, and I just think that she’s a much more interesting character.

One of the positives about this book was that, even though Bluebelle had to keep a food diary, she treated it like a PROPER diary where she would be telling the doctors about her day and her crush on a boy… her personal feelings… So technically, this whole novel IS her food diary, and I thought it was such a unique way of telling the story, because it fitted in with what the character had to do in the story but then also acted as the way of telling the story. Bluebelle loves herself, she loves her fat, loves her food and she’s proud of it. She shows us that it is okay to love food, to love to eat, and to try and feel comfortable in your body and to not feel pressured by society to look a certain way. However, she also teaches us that even though you might be overweight, you still have to take care of yourself and your body. It’s such an important message to add and it’s what made this book so special to me.

“If they don’t want to be skinny, that’s just as offensive as calling somebody fat. Funny how people think it’s rude to go round calling people fat but not skinny. Skinny people get self-conscious too.”

– Laura Dockrill, Big Bones

As for the actual content: it broke my heart at times. Some situations, memories, trains of thought were so familiar to me as for 10 years, I have suffered with anxiety about my body.. It reminded me of everything I had to go through. I do love how there isn’t any actual mention of bullying in Big Bones since it isn’t only the bullying you struggle with when you’re overweight. It’s so much more than that.

Overall, Big Bones was an ok read. It wasn’t ground-breaking. But, there was something there that made me feel emotional, and even thought the story didn’t start until 70% of the book, it was enjoyable.

Disclaimer: this book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Trigger warnings: fatphobia, anxiety, weight struggles