Thursday, February 23, 2017

Holding Up The Universe by Jennifer Niven

28671039
3.5 Stars

“Remember this: YOU ARE WANTED. Big, small, short, pretty, plain, friendly, shy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself.

Especially not yourself.”

So this is the super offensive book that no one wanted to read due to a reference in the blurb about how the main character was so fat she had to be removed from her house with a crane. Have none of y’all ever seen My 600 Pound Life???? This wasn’t “fat shaming,” it was spot on accurate. You see, Libby (said craned-out MC) weighed 653 pounds at one point and did, in fact, have to pretty much get the windows blown out of her house in order to be saved when she was almost dying. But instead of people being reasonable, this happened . . . . .



And Holding Up The Universe got blacklisted and the blurb had to get changed and a whole bunch of other assholery occurred like the much loved All The Bright Places magically also became super offensive and apparently now is thought to belittle mental health and oh my Christ now I know why people talk about effing snowflakes so much!

Read this if you want, don’t read it if you don’t want. I give zero poops. If you decide to give it a shot, kudos to you because you’ll get to meet some interesting people. Not only Libby, but also Libby’s (actually present, which hardly ever happens in YA books) dad, as well as Jack (and everything you never would have known about the disorder prosopagnosia), while you discover sometimes young adult authors write characters who aren’t all white – shocking, I know, and also little brothers like Dusty who decided to start carrying a purse over the summer and believes “if I want to carry a purse, I’m going to carry it. I’m not going to not carry it just because they don’t like it.” You’ll read teens who actually sound like teens and have their share of dickish moments and you’ll get to experience a relatable first crush rather than instalove and laugh out loud when Libby says things like: “I want to lean in and get a whiff of him and rest my head on his should or maybe make out with his neck” while slow dancing with a boy. Or keep being offended just for the sake of being offended, because that seems legit.

ARC provided by Crown Publishing in exchange for an honest review – which took me eleven thousand years to write because I am a jerkoff.

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