Fat Chance, Charlie Vega

Originally reviewed on Cyn's Workshop

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, is an impressive debut novel with a strong voice and powerful message about loving your body and yourself.

Go, Charlie Vega!
What was so incredible about this novel was Charlie Vega. Charlie is a character any reader can connect to because she is so incredibly written.

Charlie is fat, and she owns it, and it sends a powerful message about loving your body. She struggles with a perfect friend in every way she is not, but that is the point; Charlie is perfect in her way. It is realistic, this idea that our bodies have to look a certain way, but Maldonado challenges that. It is a beautiful concept to bring to life and essential for young girls and boys to learn that there is no specific way to look and that we should love ourselves just as we are.

What also makes Charlie so great is how creative she is. She is an aspiring writer, and Maldonado tells the story wonderfully through her. The reader gets to connect to Charlie on an emotional level as she struggles to find the love for herself she should have, as she deals with boys and romance, and a stressful relationship with her mother. Her emotions fly off the pages and connect to the reader, and her use of language is precise and emotional, giving Fat Chance, Charlie Vega the depth it needs to flow.

Realistic
Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tells a story about a girl in a wonderfully realistic way. Maldonado is terrific in her storytelling because this is one any girl can connect to no matter their shape. Her stressful relationship with her mother obsessed with body image is impressive. Here, a woman was so unhappy with the way she looked that she tries to force her unhappiness onto her daughter. There is much tug and pull between them as they try to understand one another, but there is also growth.

Her mother does not see that it is possible to be happy with one’s shape, and Charlie tells her how she is. She shows her and the reader how it is possible to love yourself.

There is also her relationship with her friends and boyfriend. Charlie’s struggle with loving herself bleeds into her relationships. The reader sees how she reacts, how she thinks, and empathizes with her. It makes for a thoughtful and realistic journey for the reader, allowing a genuine connection between Charlie and the reader.

Final Thoughts
Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, is an incredible and thoughtful story that shows and connects with readers on an emotional level and shows them how important it is to love yourself and your body.

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This was a fun quirky kind of read. Very much a young adult style book, dealing with high school love and dealing with Charlie's personal struggle with her weight. It was interesting how the main character dealt with not only the loss of a parent, but how she dealt with the parent left behind that made her feel self conscious of her weight. I think we as women all struggle with the stereotypes of not thinking we are loved when we don't love our own bodies.

LOVED this! It truly matched so much with how I think and feel about my weight and my body. Very cute story too

This is a unique, feel-good heart-to-heart book. There's so many emotions and throughout the story and I'm always interested in all the characters. Some moments are full of Charlie going on whining sprees, but it's accurate to Charlie being a teenager and going through her own 'growing pains'.

It took me a bit longer to finish than usual, but that's because I was enjoying it. This book should be more popular then what it is! And the cover is a nice bonus. Loved it.

I really wanted to love this book but I felt like the pacing was off. The synopsis gives away the conflict of the third-act breakup - and there were so many conflicts and issues that popped up in throughout the middle chunk of the book that there really wasn't time to address them fully.



I think the incident with Cal should've been where the story started, it sort of kicks off her emotional journey, so the fact that it occurs about a third of the way through and then the author switches gears to Brian so soon after feels weird.

My main complaint is that there isn't any resolution with the mom. Her mom is so cruel and critical to her that just about every single other character in the narrative notices and makes a point to tell Charlie that her mom's treatment of her isn't okay. Which makes the one half-hearted attempt her mom makes at an apology so underwhelming. Since there were so many dynamics and conflicts and characters that popped up and disappeared throughout story, the problems with her mom were one of the only consistent through-lines so the lack of real resolution there was very disappointing.

A second ding for Amelia (and every other character)'s constant comments and discussion that everyone has romances - hand-holding, kissing, and sex, etc - in high school. Plenty don't, it comes across as ace/aro-phobic, and also I don't think it can really be glossed over how insensitive it is to Charlie, who as Amelia knows has not done any of that. I felt like they had a good relationship and all the really difficult discussions they had about their relationship but it's still hard to swallow how insensitive Amelia was to Charlie's body image issues and obvious inferiority issues with her.