Skinny by Diana Spechler

Skinny by Diana Spechler tells the story of twenty-seven-year-old Gray, a woman who finds herself compulsively eating after her father dies. As somebody who has always been paranoid about her weight, Gray is determine to stop her eating habits and after she discovers that the daughter of a woman her father left money to is attending a weight-loss camp she signs up. She doesn't realize she has signed herself up for a summer that will change her life forever, including an affair and meeting the girl she believes to be her half-sister. However, just as beauty can be deceiving, Gray is about to learn that nothing in life is quite what it seems.

Skinny is written with a sharp and often searing wit from Spechler, and it was a novel I found surprisingly serious for what I expected to be basically chick-lit. Spechler doesn't sugarcoat things, and oftentimes her comments and observations were mean enough that they made me uncomfortable, even if it was just Gray facing the facts. It is definitely not a novel to pick up if you are struggling with your weight or self-esteem, because many of the scenes are slightly upsetting. That said, Spechler's voice was frank and honest, and Skinny is definitely a novel unlike any I have ever read so I think it will be refreshing in that regard for certain readers.

As a main character, Gray herself is not very likable, but neither are any of the other characters. Some of them seem a bit like stereotypes of themselves, like the girl who is allergic to everything. However, in the end it didn't bother me that I didn't like any of the characters because the way Spechler deals with them is often so hurtful that it is almost counter-intuitive to care about them. The storyline of Skinny is very fast-paced which makes the book is easy to read, even if it is often like staring at a car wreck, although a very articulate and clever one, none of the characters in the book are really in a good place in their lives. My overall feelings about the novel were a bit tainted by the ending, which left me wanting more and feeling pretty depressed. Many of the reasons that Skinny is frustrating is because it forces the reader to look at themselves and the norms that society perpetuates and the way that we view our bodies- and when it comes to those issues, it may not be a book that I enjoyed but it is definitely one that I appreciated.  

Release Date: April 26th, 2011
Pages: 368
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This review was a part of TLC Book Tours. Click here to read what other tour hosts thought. For the purpose of this review I was provided with a copy of the book which did not require a positive review. The opinions expressed in this post are completely my own.