When two opposing viewpoints come together on television, the outcome can be intense and lead to life-changing choices.
Alexis Allbright prefers as little human contact as possible, the only person who can get close to her is her gay best friend. She hides behind her weight loss-fueled blog, "Skinny Chick." Shoshana Weiner collects friends wherever she goes and makes women who are overweight feel good about themselves through her blog, "Fat and Fabulous." The two women come together on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and then all bets are off. Their lives go in a direction they never would have expected. Will they be able to make peace with each other over their drastically different opinions surrounding weight?
I had been looking forward to reading "150 Pounds" ever since I heard about it earlier this fall. The fact that there was a Jewish character sporting a Hebrew name definitely added to that excitement. I was definitely not disappointed and couldn't put it down once I got into the story. I enjoyed reading about both Alexis and Shoshana, as they had such different lifestyles. While I'm more like Shoshana in nature, I also found that I could relate to Alexis. In any case, this story definitely shows how much work goes into keeping up a blog. It also inspired me to do new things with this blog! Plus, there's an entreprenurial story within and I enjoyed that too, as I usually do. The secondary characters were vivid and interesting, and they supported the story well. The descriptions were great and allowed me to easily visualize people and places. The story had a Stacey Ballis feel to it, which I definitely like.
The main thing that didn't work as well for me was that the chapters were way too long and just focused on one character at a time. I tended to forget the stuff about the girl that wasn't featured and got confused when it came to their part again. I felt that each chapter should have been split between both characters and that some minutiae could have been left out in order to accommodate this. Also, I was hoping Shoshana could have had some more drama in her story line, even though her light, happy lifestyle was an interesting contrast to Alexis' stressful situation. Although I received an advanced reading copy, there were so many mistakes that it was hard to follow at times. I only hope these were all caught prior to publication. I blame the errors on autocorrect, if such a thing exists for writing books. In any case, these issues did not take away from my enjoyment of the story.
Overall, I had a fun time reading "150 Pounds" and it definitely brought up some thought provoking issues that would make for a great book club discussion. I recommend this novel to anyone who wants a fun and original story to kick off 2012.
Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review. Kate Rockland will be at Chick Lit Central tomorrow and readers all over the world will have a chance to win this exciting new novel!
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