Big Girl: A Novel

I love Danielle Steel books and this one has to be my favorite so far.
A book of acceptance, forgiving the past,and loving yourself are so important. And of course a romance as an added bonus made this story an even better one ( )

Title: Big Girl
Author: Danielle Steel
Genre: Chick Lit

Challenges: 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, The Naming Convention Challenge, Book Around the States Challenge, Read and Review Challenge 2010, TBR Challenge 2010, 100 Reading Challenge, Pages Read 2010, A to Z challenge, 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge, Audio Book Challenge 2010, Contemporary Romance Challenge in 2010

Rating: 5/5
No. of Pages: 536 (Audio)
Published: 2010


Back Cover: Victoria Dawson has always felt out of place in her family, especially in body-conscious L.A. Her father, Jim, is tall and slender, and her Mother, Christina, is a fine-boned, dark-haired beauty. Both are self-centered, outspoken, and disappointed by their daughter’s looks. While her parens and sister can eat anything and not gain an ounce, Victoria must watch everything she eats, as well as endure her father’s belittling comments about her body and see her academic achievements go unacknowledged. Ice cream and oversized helpings of all the wrong foods give her comfort, but only briefly. The one thing she knows is that she has to get away from home, and after college in Chicago, she moves to New York City.

Behind Victoria is a lifetime of hurt and neglect she has tried to forget, and even ice cream can no longer dull the pain. Ahead is a challenge and risk: to accept herself as she is, celebrate it, and claim the victories she has faught so hard for and deserves. Big girl or not, she is terrific and discovers that herself.

Mine: What a wonderfully timely book as we talk about bullying and obesity. Victoria suffers both, but worst of all the bullying comes from her own family. She’s just the “tester cake” that comes before her perfect sister. There are time while listening to the book – it was frustrating to think that her family is the cause of a lot of her heartache.

The wonderful thing about this story is we travel with Victoria through her journey of self-discovery and healing. She does finally discover she is worth of someone’s love as the person that she is, not what her family thinks of her.
( )

Why on earth I'm reading this is beyond me. I hate Danielle Steel. I read my first DS ("The Accident") in sixth grade. And at that point, it was probably appropriate, reading-level -wise (though perhaps not in terms of subject matter). I think I read one more after that before I caught on to the formula and abandoned her in disgust.

At any rate, I found this at a rummage sale for a quarter. I'm half done with the book and feel I over-paid. The writing is crap. The characters are one dimensional. Her mother is a Stepford wife. Her dad is cruel. Her sister is beautiful. But fear not! In spite of being "fat" (more on this in a sec!), Victoria, our protagonist, is perfect in every way. She loves her sister. She has a fabulous job, a fabulous apartment, and fabulous friends. She is without fault.

You know, except for the fact that she is FAT. And DS won't let you forget it, either. Literally every page, there is some reference to how skinny and perfect her family is and how hideously fat Victoria is. Her parents mock her at every gathering. Her students speak of her weight behind her back. People look and point.

So how large is this behemouth? Brace yourself!

A 14. (A 12 when she loses 10 lbs.)

Now, as a size 14 myself, perhaps I'm biased. I'm under no illusions that I'm thin, and I am well aware that I could stand to lose 25 pounds. Few people have self-esteem as shitty as mine. Few are as insecure about the size of their ass. And yet I really don't think that I'm SOOO large that people whisper about my size behind my back. Perhaps I am in denial, perhaps I just live in a more generous part of the country (South Dakota), but I still find this incredibly far-fetched.

And yet....I continue to read. It's like a horrible, horrible train wreck. I just can't look away.

EDIT: I've finished this. It did not get better. If anything, it got worse. After two nights of reading about how fat even a size 10 is, I was left wanting to slit my wrists. I don't think I've ever felt so fat as a result of reading a book.

The ending itself was truly awful. There's a "crisis/betrayal" that she devotes about 4 pages to before she entirely glosses over it. Why she bothered with this "plot twist" at all is beyond me.

Please, please save yourself a day or two of your life. Even for DS, this is a truly awful book. I didn't even donate it to GoodWill; it went straight to the trash. I don't want to take the chance of passing it on to another unsuspecting reader. If I could give it less than 1 star, I would. ( )

I have not read many Danielle Steel books - just a few, the most memorable being Palomino, back when I was a teen. However, I liked the sound of this book when I read the dust jacket blurb. I liked the protagonist, Victoria, very much. I rather identified with her in some ways (the weight struggle, large chest, etc) . . . but I found her parents insufferable. I wanted to them to change, to realize the errors in their ways (they always remind Victoria that she is the weird one in their family, that they don't love her nearly as much as her little sister.) It's all because of her weight, her nose, her "brains" and so on. They are horribly shallow and mean people. In a way, however, I am glad that her parents don't change, because that would probably highly unrealistic if they did. ( )

I had fond memories of Danielle Steels books though I outgrew the shmaltz a while ago. Still I remember the emotion and warmth of those novels and was disappointed to find it totally lacking in Big Girl. The premise sounded interesting, given i heard the same tag growing up, but Steel's treatment of the issues were stereotypical and shallow and her character's were no better. The writing was a mono-tonal and repetitive and too simplistic. It's readable, but not sadly not really enjoyable. ( )