How I Got Skinny, Famous, and Fell Madly in Love

March 15, 2014
A fat teen employs patently unsafe weight-loss techniques on reality television and gets skinny. Emery's face-lifted, Botoxing mother named her after a manicure tool, yet somehow Emery doesn't fit in with her swimsuit-model, boob-enhanced sister or fitness-freak father. What if she weren't fat? She acquiesces to the filming of a weight-loss reality show in her home, wanting the prize--if Emery loses 50 pounds in 50 days, she'll win $1,000,000--but author Baker, chief news correspondent of E! Entertainment Television, makes skinniness itself the golden goal, snarkily bashing fatness from the start. The show's producers require intense exercise and severe calorie restriction; behind their backs, Emery adds laxative tea and Adderall. Attempts to satirize the extremity--the nutritionist who takes Emery down to 790 calories per day authored How to Eat without Actually Eating--have the impact of Post-it notes on a billboard. Baker wants it both ways: Laxatives, speed and "insanely low" calories give Emery both "an eating disorder" and "good habits," a cognitive disconnect if ever there was one; moreover, the eating disorder vanishes after its single mention, ending the story on a bizarrely upbeat note. Continuity inconsistencies may well drive readers crazy; that 790-calorie diet could well be a 395-calorie diet, for instance, but it's just not clear. Family secrets and reality TV twists aside, this is a cheap instruction guide for dangerous dieting. A biggest loser. (Fiction. 14-16)

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June 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Emery Jackson, daughter of a former model and a basketball star, and sister to an aspiring TV host, has begrudgingly accepted her role as the snarky, pleasantly plump sister with a pretty face. An opportunity arises for the dysfunctional Southern Californian family to be showcased in a reality TV show that will follow the protagonist as she tries to lose 50 pounds in 50 days. Emery undergoes physical, emotional, and psychological challenges as she deals with the backlash and privacy issues that are part and parcel with her instant celebrity status, in addition to her rigorous diet and exercise regime. While important and relevant topics such as self-worth and slut-shaming are broached in the narrator's YouTube monologues, which are interspersed throughout the narrative, these themes barely skim the surface of this problematic novel. An uneven treatment of her bout with an eating disorder and an out-of-left-field reveal at the end, will keep teens from connecting with Emery. Even though the main character is technically obese, the description of her weight and height don't completely jive with how she describes herself in the mirror. Whether this is due to Emery's negative self-image is never made clear by the author. For a more nuanced take on body issues in YA, offer mature readers Erin Jade Lange's Butter (Bloomsbury, 2012) or Kody Keplinger's The Duff (Little, Brown, 2010).-Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2014
Grades 8-11 In a world where beauty reigns supreme and berfit bodies are worshipped, plus-sized Emery Jacksonage 16, size 16wrestles with her desire to be loved and her devotion to food. She hates the three-letter F-bomb fat but admits that's exactly what she is. Her California-beach family includes her mother (a former Lakers Girl); her father (a former Laker turned motivational speaker); and her underwear-model sister (the poster girl for perfection, fake boobs and all). The anchor in Emery's storm is her chubby, easy-going boyfriend, Ben, who unwaveringly loves her for herself. When the family home is threatened with foreclosure, Emery finds herself the star of the new hit reality show Fifty Pounds to Freedom. Can she lose 50 pounds in 50 days to win a million dollars? Emery, a colorful, outspoken, and compelling narrator, is a truth-teller and a truth-seeker whose internal and external struggles have that stick-to-your-ribs quality (without the calories). Baker clearly illustrates the everyday battles many girls deal with and sends the message that they're not alone and that they are in control.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)