My thoughts are still jumbled about this story. The plot description caught my attention immediately: women signing up for an extreme weight loss documentary and ultimately rebelling against the trainers and filmmakers. I was looking forward to an empowering read and imagined myself mentally cheering and pumping my fist in the air: take that, destructive diet culture! And yet . . . it wasn’t really like that. Somehow the momentum of the story deflated just as it should have peaked. To the point where I almost felt as though the “revolution” was a resignation of sorts.

Here’s what I do appreciate about the story: the characters of Alice and Daphne. They are flawed, certainly, but they are imminently relate-able. There was a lot going on in each of their lives and the families–they were more than just their struggles with weight. And I respect that depiction. (Even if my personal pet peeve of spending scads of time describing an overweight woman’s appearance only to create a mental image that is ultimately laughably unrealistic by revealing her true size to be about two sizes larger than the average American woman’s size was in play.)

Maybe not what I expected, but a thought-provoking story nonetheless.