Okay.  I’m trying to figure out how to sum up this book and my feelings about it.  This is probably the hardest review I will ever write.  The subject matter will hit home for many women throughout the world.  The heroine’s doormat nature is what is harder to take.  Let me start by saying the writing is brilliant—packed with humor, emotion and life-like characters.  It is the story’s train-wreck feeling that makes it harder.  I had to keep reading.  However, I also knew that until the heroine toughened up, things couldn’t improve.

The heroine, Maggie, is a very tall, plus-sized woman.  She’s been large for her entire life, and her best friend, Olivia, has been her saving grace.  The pair had each other for support throughout their teen years and early adulthood.

However, the day arrives when the morbidly obese Olivia decides she must be skinny.  She heads off to surgery and then proceeds to work her way to a size two for her wedding day.  Unfortunately, this new Olivia seems to have lost track of who she was in the past.  Olivia seems to have reinvented her childhood memories—memories that are now packed with hunky boyfriends, popular cliques, and the likes.  Maggie doesn’t want to give up on the best friend she’s ever had, but Olivia certainly isn’t making it easy.  With Maggie trying to figure out her place in life, her place in Olivia’s wedding, and her own romantic pursuits, Maggie needs to make some hard choices—choices she isn’t sure she can make.

Wearing a size fourteen my freshman year of high school, I think I’ve heard all the fat jokes that exist.  By my senior year, I was wearing a ten, and the fat jokes still kept rolling.  Times don’t change, and for the most part, portions of this book seemed to mirror events from my own life.  The author does a splendid job in capturing the cruelness that “plus-sized” people endure.  However, the book isn’t heavy or depressing, there is plenty of humor and a delicious revenge scene to keep the reader avidly reading.

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE FAT GIRL isn’t your typical read.  The heroine is human, she isn’t perfectly built, but that should never matter—shame on you if it does.  Maggie is smart, witty and very likeable.  I can’t wait to see what Liza Palmer comes up with next.  Her debut is amazing, and I imagine future works can only get better!