DNF
Genre: Women's Fiction
TL;DR: this is one of the most hurtful and painfully cruel books I have ever attempted to read. I have serious concerns about readers’ potential experiences with this story, and the harm and hurt it may cause.
My notes begin with the following sentence and I stand by it:
THIS BOOK IS TOXIC.
Please proceed with this review and with this book with extreme caution.
TW/CW: fat shaming, disordered eating, and physical and emotional self-harm and abuse.
Thinking about this book, and thinking about writing this review, has made me so queasy. I’ve stopped and started again six or seven times now. Trying to read it made me feel awful: awful about myself, and awful for the people who might pick it up expecting to find a story that makes them feel good, or that makes them laugh. Good Luck With That made me feel terrible burning shame, hopelessness, and that cloying throat-blockage of imminent tears. In other words, the exact opposite experience from what I wanted.
The premise of the book is as follows: Emerson, Georgia, and Marley met at a weight-loss camp as young women. They made a list of things they were going to do when they were finally thin, and then grew up in separate directions, as friends do. Then Emerson dies, and Georgia and Marley are tasked with completing the list Emerson left behind. It’s a familiar premise, with old friends reuniting over the unfulfilled wishes of a lost loved one.
The problem is the execution of moving Georgia and Marley from one state of mind regarding weight and self-acceptance to the state of or even the idea of loving themselves as they are.
The point of view switches between Marley and Georgia, with some chapters that are excerpts from Emerson’s diary as well. Their perspectives, with the amount of self-loathing and cruel judgment they inflict on everyone around them, created a harmful environment for me as a reader, and reading as far as I did was excruciating.
I’ve thought about this book a lot since I tried to read it (three times), and I think that if the intention was to present a journey of self-acceptance, the start of that journey was too deeply set in loathing for fatness, and on loathing of anything associated with being overweight, to ever reach a destination of self love. The points of view read as if these characters see fatness as a choice. They think about fatness as if this is what thin people think fat people ought to feel about themselves: shame, embarrassment, self-hatred, and loathing.
The root problem is the foundation of the characters’ journey: Emerson dies at the start of the story, and the cause of her death is unclear enough that it appears she died because she was very fat. As they discover more about her final months of life, which were abysmal due to mistreatment, cruelty, and neglect, Marley and Georgia compare themselves to Emerson to varying degrees, both with a relieved air of, Well, at least I wasn’t THAT fat.
Emerson is never a character, or a person treated with sympathy or understanding. She’s a foundation, a jumping off point for Marley and Georgia’s journeys, and the flattening of Emerson into a prop only makes her portrayal more painful. She is described by other characters as disgusting, as a waste, and not as a person. The only time we see Emerson as a complex, nuanced human being is in her diary entries, and they’re mostly self-abuse and self-abnegation.
Emerson’s death is used as a lesson and an example, then as motivation for the other characters to lose weight in a way that further reduced her into a meaningless absence. Their reaction to seeing her in the hospital is excruciating:
Hard to recognize amid the tubes and wires and the second chin so big it rested on her chest…and God, the mountains, the acres of flesh….
In her hand she clutched an envelope, but clearly she was too weak to lift her arm to hand it to us. Or her arm was too heavy. Or both.
Then there was Emerson’s usefulness as a dead inspiration:
I was going to lose that last bit of weight. I could do it. Emerson would want me to do it.
The memory of her, helpless in that bed, wheezing, every part of her in some kind of distress…
I was so close to being thin.
Emerson’s death doesn’t cause grief or feelings of loss, just determination and pity/relief, further extending the ways in which she isn’t really a person.
But it’s not just the treatment of Emerson that made me stop, though that was plenty discouraging and made me feel crumpled. Georgia and Marley also speak as if they represent accurately every fat person’s perspective, and constantly inform the reader (“you”) how fat people “are,” while adding a painful first-person “I” or “our” to further complicate perspective:
True peace was rare when you were fat. When you were fat, you wore armor to protect and deflect.
…a nurse, one who was carrying a good sixty-five extra pounds herself. (Estimating weight is one of the superpowers of the fat.)
It was our story, after all, the story of all fat people. Eat those emotions.
These were the things thin girls got to do, things that were out of reach for us fatties.
Their descriptions of one another are cruel, as they outline the acceptable and unacceptable ways one might be fat:
Marley was the best person on earth. So instinctively kind, so funny, so generous…and yes, sure, overweight, but she carried it well – she’d always had a waist and great boobs. She could get away with zaftig or Rubenesque.
Not me. I’d always been fat-fat, like a troll, like a egg. There was no romantic word for how I was shaped.
Each chapter includes a moment that compares the point of view character to another person, to the dead body of Emerson, and to fantasy ideals of thinness. The use of first-person narration made these moments heartlessly painful for reader, especially when coupled with the use of the second person. “I am fat like a troll,” then “true peace was rare when you were fat” – the variations in point of view using “I” and “we” then “you” only made it confusing and difficult to escape the negativity and self hatred.
Beneath my notes where I wrote “THIS BOOK IS TOXIC,” is another smaller note:
“This book is hurting me.”
Reading Marley and Georgia’s narration and Emerson’s diary resurrected every terrible thing I’ve said to myself as the characters said those same things to themselves, and to other people. Moving to a place where I am kind to my body and the unique way it works, where I work with my own physiology instead of battling the space in which I live with weaponized guilt, shame, and cruelty, took years and years of work. I didn’t want to go back.
If learning to undo those patterns of self-abuse was part of the journey for these two characters, I could not go with them. The place where they started was so flawed in its premise, so unsteady in its cruel and hurtful foundation, I saw no way for them to ever be anything but toxic to themselves, and to me.
I stopped reading.
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Thank you for this warning! Books should not make their readers feel this bad. It’s hard to believe a book like this can make it out there. I feel like somewhere this story might have started off as a great idea but sadly quickly took a turn for the worst.
Sarah, you’re an amazing, beautiful person, inside and out. Fuck this book.
I’ve read a few of this author’s romances that all contain some completely unnecessary, casually vicious interaction with one marginalized person or another (but it’s all in good fun, lighten up!), so I’m not surprised she’s moved to a genre where she can delve all the way into that loathing of others and call it the plot.
Wow. This sounds awful. The pursuit of being thin as the be all and end all, yes it is definately toxic. Do these people have any other life goals? This would totally trigger someone with an eating disorder or body dismorphia. Thinness doesn’t equal happiness. i’m average sized now, but I lost a load of weight because I stopped eating due to depression. People quite often told me how good I looked when all I wanted to do was cry in a corner.
Thank you for posting this review. This book would hurt me too. It took a long time for me to be kind to my body. Honestly, it’s still a work in progress. This book is definitely not for me.
I had an opportunity to read a review copy of this book and while my reaction was not as strong as yours. I certainly would not have recommended the book. I had a more negative reaction to the ways in which Emerson was portrayed and treated. I agree that she was just a device/not a person — and isn’t that one of the points of the book (sort of), that others do not see fat women (because there is no discussion of fat men) as not being a person. I know a lot of women are going to pick up this book because the premise sounds great, Kristan Higgins has a light fun voice, and Women’s Fiction is hot right now. Many will be more than disappointed — their self-loathing will be validated and obviously being thin and/or having an acceptably Rubenesque body will get you the man. Because at the end of it all, this book is a romance.
I hate this. I hate all this. Thank you for persevering to write this review.
Also, this: (Estimating weight is one of the superpowers of the fat.)
Is not true. I’m fat and I’m terrible at estimating anyone’s weight or size. BECAUSE I DON’T SPEND MY LIFE PAYING ATTENTION TO THOSE THINGS. Because fat is not my primary identity.
TW: [body image issues, eating disorders]
I’ve read reviews of this book before and, every time, I go in knowing it’s terrible and triggering, and, every time, it’s a lot worse than I remembered. I have an eating disorder and the road to “just a little more weight & I’ll be thin enough to be happy” has no end. I also lost weight due to illness & I remember people telling me how lucky I was to have been sick for 4 straight months (dengue fever, zika, & 2 respiratorh infections from being so weak from the other 2 illnesses) and how much they envied me while my whole body hurt to the nerves in the back of my eyes. And I can never guess what anyone weighs by looking (why would I want to???) because my eating disorder & body image issues make my brain incapable of processing body size information. I don’t even know what I weight because I’ll stop eating if I look at the balance!
I read this book and actually really enjoyed it. I thought it spoke to the need for women to be kinder to themselves and to stop listening to messages that limit us based on how much we weigh. It’s toxicity is in that message: we must be thin, we must be thinner, we must be thinnest. THAT is what’s toxic.
I agree with you about Emerson to some degree. She’s sort of a ghost. But her letters to the thin version of herself are heartbreaking.
This book ripped me apart. In fact, I’m still crying over it. But I loved it, and I think it is a fantastic book for book clubs because there is so much to discuss here.
Thank you for this review so I never, ever go near this book. I hated myself for being fat from age 8 to 28, and never want to go back to that. (Fatter than ever now, but woo hoo, I feel fine about it! This way is way more fun.)
It sounds like the characters have, as I had, a major case of the Fantasy of Being Thin, which is the title of a great essay by Kate Harding that honestly changed my life and how I think about myself and others. “When I’m thin, I’ll have no trouble getting guys to love me! When I’m thin, I’ll be a way cooler person!” I gotta recommend this:
https://kateharding.net/2007/11/27/the-fantasy-of-being-thin/
Thanks for your review. I don’t read Kristin Higgins anymore. She had been one of my favorites and I owned every one of her books to that point. But her formula seems to include public and cruel humiliation of the heroine, which is just breezed over as no big deal on the way to HEA. Too often I came away from her books feeling really bad.
Thank you so much for posting this… I am so heartbroken to see these kinds of attitudes perpetuated in fiction aimed at female readers. I’ve lost about 1/3 of my body weight in the last year, and what’s hard to explain to people about that change is that it was only when I was able to love myself and body as is and without any kind of condition about what it should or shouldn’t be that I was ready to let the weight go. It kills me that we think fat people have to wait to feel worthy or healthy or loved until they are at a certain size. No one needs to meet some kind of condition or get some kind of social permission to exist and be accepted. I long for the day when women do not project these ideas of internalized misogyny into each other, not to mention the general misogynistic forces in our culture that make billions of dollars off of humiliating and demeaning fat people into trying to be worthy of social acceptance. Ugh- OK, I’m going to end my rant here. Thank you DB Sarah from warning me off this one
Wow. Unfort your review means I’m dying to know the outcome here. Maybe the characters got wise? Probably not… But I’m not dying enough to buy it.
I’m reading “Hunger” by Roxane Gay. I’ve been reading it for over 6 months now, a little bit at a time, made easier by its organisation into small, impressive chapters. It’s a tough read. It’s a challenging one for me as it made me address some of the lingering prejudices I have about bodies that deviate from the norm and how that’s bolstered by how media and medicine frame them.
I don’t know that I recommend it as an alternative to this because, whew, Roxane puts herself (and us) under a microscope, but it’s not mercilessly. (Plus, it’s a memoir so not in the same genre.) She writes with such pain but with such love and…well, it’s worth a shot if you’re in a space that allows you to take it in.
Months ago I saw a book reviewer live tweeting her reading experience of this book. She had to DNF as the story was triggering to her own eating disorder. Everything in this review rang true to her explained experience.
Thanks so much for taking one for the team. This book was not on my radar—and, as soon as I read your review, I knew it never would be. I absolutely loathe the “you’ll have such a wonderful life once you lose X-number of pounds” narratives. It’s sad that fat-shaming (especially fat-woman shaming) is still considered “acceptable”. I remember throwing a Joe Hill book across the room because of the reference to an “obese woman” in Denny’s. That was supposed to tell us everything we needed to know about the character (who, it turned out, was horrible—but of course she was—she was fat! Aarrgghh!!). I think it was HEART-SHAPED BOX, if you want to avoid it. Anyway, take it from Naomi Wolfe who observed, a society obsessed with women’s thinness is actually obsessed with women’s obedience.
That sounds just… ick. I can’t think of a better word to describe my reaction. Life’s too short to read books that hate me, so I’ll be avoiding this and probably other works by the author, jic.
Also, (Estimating weight is one of the superpowers of the fat.)
Yeah, no. Not something I can do and I’ve been a fat chick for decades. Not something I want to do either. I’ll stick with my mutant power of lactose tolerance.
Yikes. I think at this point they just let Higgins publish whatever she wants and don’t make content notes during editing. That’s the only way I can see this getting published.
I’m not a fan of this author, as I noticed an underlying meanness in the couple of books I tried to read. I don’t want my reading time polluted by that kind of negativity. Or, at least negativity that doesn’t serve a purpose and without change.
Thank you for sharing this review! I really liked Kristan Higgins’ Blue Heron series, although there were some moments of meanness or slut-shaming that I didn’t care for. Since her transition from straight-up romance to more “women’s fiction,” I haven’t really enjoyed her books as much so this book wasn’t an instabuy for me like some of her previous ones were.
This is a really tough topic to address in a book. And there is a fine line between exploring the very real ways in which women think about their bodies and immersing the reader in those thoughts for way too long. It sounds like this book is doing the latter and additionally those moments of meanness from her previous books are in full force when it comes to Emerson. Even if there is an “aha” moment for the other characters at the end, it doesn’t seem worth it to subject myself to disordered thinking that is unchallenged in the moment. And I’m not keen on the idea that Emerson is forever treated as a cautionary tale. This feels a little like the discourse around 13 Reasons Why (which I have not read or seen): it’s an important topic but it’s not handled in a way that is sensitive to those who struggle with this.
The only thing I can say is thank you.
Thank you for this review. I’m still so angry about this book every single time I see it discussed or mention. Personally, I refuse to read KH anyway because other books of hers I’ve read have been really offensive (one memorably was very transphobic). This takes it to another level.
Wow. Yikes. Thank you for posting this review. I was curious so I had a quick look at the reviews on Amazon and they are so uniformly glowing that I feel like there has to be some sort of publicity machine at work here. Maybe I’m naive and didn’t realize that is a thing that happens all the time? One of the reviewers says “I think every teenager should read this book.” Um, no thank you. The book is also being touted as one of “the summer’s best beach reads.” I am reasonably happy with my size in general and I still struggle with body image at the beach. I feel particular sympathy for anyone who picks this up to read in that environment and ends up spending their vacation feeling sad.
@DiscoDollyDeb, Heart-Shaped Box is on my read-someday list so thank you for letting me know I can cheerfully delete it.
To want to be thin as a premise is trite but fine. The part I am lost on is the continued cruelty of the friends to each other. What purpose does that serve other than to incite anxiety and judgement in readers?
I am fat and I have been bulimic for almost ten years, a bulimia that I still do not get proper treatment for because I am “too fat” to be “actually” bulimic. My road to recovery has been long and difficult and reading this book (the part that I could get through, anyway) triggered one of the biggest and most painful relapses I’ve ever endured. I’m sad that this book is out there. It hurt me. And I’m ashamed that so many in our community are lifting it up. It makes me feel like they hate me and feel the same way about me and fat women like me as this book apparently does.
Sarah, I commend you for your well-thought out and articulated review. I read it today only a few hours after reading a piece Kristan Higgins herself posted about the book and its debut. I felt a bit uncomfortable while reading her piece and the same again while reading yours. I’m not an overweight person. I was, however, for the first 1/3 or so of my life. Here’s my experience, and it was echoed in the words Higgins posted today: a fat person sees EVERYTHING and everyone first and foremost as a reaction to his/her own size. Every move I made as a middle school and high school student and later as a young adult was accompanied by the thought “are they thinking about how fat I am?” In the years since as I found some internal peace and let go of food as the source of comfort/punishment/reward and everything else, it’s struck me time and time again that I wasted countless hours in totally unwarranted agony. Everyone on the planet is carrying around a demon in one form or another, and yes, too often other people nonetheless have time to sneer or say something rude, but they too, are filled with their own doubts and feelings of unworthiness. So is it a good idea for a reader, of any size, to dwell in the misery and self-hatred Higgins’ characters reveal, even if they find peace at the end? (and that’s an assumption, since I haven’t read it yet.) I can’t decide. Kristan Higgins freely admits that she suffered greatly from her size while growing up and is now in a better place, so I can only assume that she hopes through her book to help readers find a path to a similar peace. I always liked her older romances: the conflicts were real, but not insurmountable, the characters were good people trying to work things out, the wine always sounded delicious, and the endings brought a sigh of contentment. There’s a real need for that kind of thing in today’s world. I’m not sure there’s a need for a trip through misery, no matter what the outcome.
Thank you.
Sarah, thank you. (As it happens, audible recommended this to me this afternoon. Ha, no!)
Margaret, I don’t think there’s a single experience of being fat. My mother was a tiny bird boned thing who married a former line backer – and I took after the line backer. I varied between being Amazonian growing up and a bit heavy, but I was constantly told I was overweight. (I was furious when I realized that not only was my mother full of shit, but my doctors were tell me I was too heavy when I was at 17% body fat – I was swimming competitively.) My younger siblings eventually struggled with eating disorders. I flatly refused to buy into the pressure, and did what I wanted and wore what I wanted (and eventually moved out on my own when I was fifteen, but that’s another story.) I wasn’t exactly body positive, but I was dieting and restrictive standards of beauty negative and fuck all that. Possibly one of the most self-protective impulses I’ve had, considering what I saw my younger sibs go through since then.
Sometimes I struggled. Sometimes less so. But it was never a central part of my identity, even when I had someone else trying to make it so. I started actively trying to make friends with my body in my late teens – but I’ve had major spine injuries and other fun to work through along the way. (Not to mention the kind of spouse who did a lot of the “I love you, but no one else would,” bullshit.) It’s a process, y’know?
Wow. It sounds like the title, Good Luck with That, fits this book in a lot of ways.
@Lori – “Even if there is an “aha” moment for the other characters at the end, it doesn’t seem worth it to subject myself to disordered thinking that is unchallenged in the moment.” This sums it up for me exactly.
Shared with permission from a friend who suffered through it: “Higgins clearly can’t even imagine a fat person would feel any other way about themselves. It’s in no way a nuanced exploration of what it’s like to be fat. It’s hate and shame x3, with no attempt to balance with any other perspective. There was no reason to repeat the same attitude in triplicate other than to amplify it beyond what a single self-loathing character would narrate. It validates not once, not twice, but three times how fatphobic people WANT fat people to feel: ashamed to be alive; there is NO alternative presented despite the three opportunities to do so. People who hate fat people are the audience for this book, and I’m sure they’ll make it a huge bestseller by buying multiple copies to give to every fat relative, friend, coworker, and stranger who offends their sensibilities, like a handbook for how unacceptable they SHOULD feel if they have the gall to be comfortable as they are.”
Oh my.
Thank you for reviewing this book because it saved me and countless others from reading it. I struggled with anorexia nervosa for many years, then gained weight due to sedentary lifestyle and depression. Food and weight are something I fight every day. I don’t need the shame or the hate. Neither do any of us. I have such strong feelings about this, in part because of Higgins’s somewhat enjoyable Blue Heron series which might lead a reader to believe, as you say, that s/he would get a positive experience from reading this book due to author reputation. This entire book seems to me that it is mean spirited rather than empowering or being from a loving place. I can’t with that shit.
Imma nope right outta this one.
Wow. Just…wow. I had heard there were issues with this book, but … wow. Thanks. I’m not planning on picking this one up.
For those of you who’ve read the entire book, I’m curious – how does it end? Or more to the point, do their attitudes change? Does it become less fat-phobic?
I agree, judging from the feeling one gets from Higgin’s essay about the situation that since things got better for her post-weight loss ergo her feelings ought to work broadly and universally. That’s never the case, of course, and the fiction is so fat-hating that she doesn’t bother to give a counterbalance to anything.
@KB – It’s the same over on Goodreads as well.
@Margaret – I agree with Lepiota; this isn’t my experience as a fat woman, and unless someone’s an asshole about my weight directly to me, it’s not something I think about.
Hi. *waves shyly* I was the live-reader for this on Twitter, the one who had to quit because it was so awful. (This review is VERY good, and thank you for it.)
Several people have asked how the book ends. I spoil it on my blog because I wanted to know too. I won’t write it all out here (because I don’t want to spoil people who don’t want to be spoiled) but I’ll leave a link if that’s allowed.
http://www.anamardoll.com/2018/01/good-luck-with-that-chapter-5.html
[Mild spoilers; TW for fat hatred and ED] The short version is, uh, “not great”. The women get HEAs and stay “fat”, but one of the women is pretty clearly not fat at all (she has an ED, which is real and serious!, but she’s pretty clearly not fat based on the hints dropped about her clothing ranges) and the other one stays “fat” but at multiple points promises to exercise her heart out forever and never become fat like Emerson. So they’re not really happy at any size, just happy at this size they plan to maintain.
I am sorry you were unable to finish this book. I read it, and I applaud Kristan Higgins as an author who is able to tackle tough subjects in women’s fiction–tactfully, honestly and with a bit of humor. “Good Luck with That” is an emotional, sometimes heartbreaking novel.
Emerson’s death is a catalyst for Marley and Georgia, predominantly because they wish they had been closer with her for the past two years. They feel guilty they’ve drifted apart. They absolutely feel shock, loss and grief. Perhaps because the book opens with Emerson’s death, it is difficult to initially see her as becoming a fully developed character. But she does. The more you read, the more you learn about her. By the end of the book, each of the three female friends is unique and memorable. The surviving friends have grown stronger and have a clear idea of what “success” means for each.
I don’t see this book as “fat shaming.” Yes, the three main characters suffer poor treatment from some family members and acquaintances. They also get love, adoration and acceptance from others. The idea of moving beyond seeing yourself negatively (or allowing others to shame you) because of body shape is the point of Georgia and Marley completing Emerson’s list.
I disagree with many views expressed in the review; some quotes are so out of context they misrepresent the novel. Books like this, about a controversial subject matter, will spur differences of opinion. I understand that you found the book painful to read and were unable to complete it. I hope others give “Good Luck with That” the chance it deserves. This isn’t a romance. It may not make you feel good. But honestly, I did feel moved and grateful for the experience. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
I think what many commenters are trying to convey is that at a certain point, context no longer matters. The words are still there, still triggering and shaming.
The last time I read a Higgins book, I wrote that reading it felt like being hit in the face with a pie –with a rock in it. This sounds like a boulder.
I feel this hurt in my skin. I am very fat. I don’t need Kristan Higgins’ pity. I don’t think loathsome thoughts about my friends who are fatter than me. When authors I admire write shit like this I can only imagine what they think when they see me at their signings. I don’t want their judgment but even more than that I don’t want their pity. I don’t need it because there’s nothing wrong with me.
I’m not sure what else to say to let authors like Higgins realize the hurt and harm books like this cause. I can only hope this sparks a conversation in Romancelandia about the problem it has with fatphobia.
After reading this review, I’m torn. I haven’t read the book, and this review makes me wonder if I want to. As a woman who has struggled with weight for my entire life–I’ve been morbidly obese, lost more than half my body weight ten years ago, but have started struggling again–I relate to what Margaret wrote in her post. I saw so many things through the lens of my weight. I figured no one saw who I was beyond my size. There were things I told myself I couldn’t do, and the things I didn’t do, because I was too embarrassed about my size.
But although I didn’t have great self-esteem, I don’t think I ever loathed myself as it sounds like the characters in this book do based on your review and some of the quotes you included. I never once referred to myself as a “fattie.” (I cringed when I read that.) And my superpower wasn’t being able to judge how much a person weighed, it was knowing the fat and calorie content of every food on the planet. Kristan Higgins is an author who has been somewhat hit-and-miss for me. I think I may need to give this one a pass, and read a book with a plus-sized heroine who loves herself the way she is.
THANK YOU for trying to read this book. I’m sorry it caused you to feel like this. KH has been an insta-buy for me, despite occasional books of hers I didn’t like in the past, so I am so glad to be able to return the book and not support this type of self/others-hate as well as avoiding the trauma I would likely have felt. THANK YOU.
Thank you for your comments and review. You saved me from buying this book. I was a fan of Higgins romanace novels, having read them all. None of her women’s fiction novels so far have been as good and this one sounds like a disaster.