allieoakesreads's reviews
214 reviews

Over 800 pages of trauma porn. Days of my life I will never get back. There were some good / touching / well written moments, but generally this book mishandles such important and sensitive topics to a point that I cannot in good conscience give this a good review. This is not “the great gay novel”— it is a depressing and poorly edited book that essentially illustrates that some people are beyond help and better off dead. Sickening. Do not waste your time.  

While the descriptions of food in this book were fun and good to read, I did not like this book. Eating Disorder fiction is boring. There is nothing interesting or shocking or mysterious about an eating disorder. Using it as the main driving force of the novel but then never addressing it properly as anything but scandalous or gross is, in my opinion, irresponsible of the author. I thought that the writing was good and I would like to read something else by her if she writes another novel but this one just made me feel uncomfortable and sad. I really think we need to move beyond our cultural fascination with eating disorders. This book brought nothing new to the conversation and if anything only sensationalized the issue further. I was skeptical at first about all the low ratings for this book because the writing style wasn’t awful but the content was just awful to me.

So anticlimactic. Horrible protagonist who truly does not give a fuck about anyone. It’s sort of boring to read because she basically just treats everyone like shit and moves from person to person like a parasite but nothing ever happens. I had such high expectations but I’m SO disappointed by the ending. Ugh.