#HearOurVoices tour: : Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado
My rating: Liked
Purchase: (bookshop.org) |Libro.fm

synopsis: Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard.

Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it's hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn't help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But there's one person who's always in Charlie's corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing--he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS.

A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

Charlie Vega is our titular lead. Her personality jumps from the page. She's smart, funny, artistic and a go getter. She and her mom. It's about a plus size young woman of color navigating through life. It deals with with being brown in a white neighborhood. Maldonado did a great job fleshing out Charlie and her relations with other people. People at work, school and at home. This title touches on diet culture and how mothers can love their daughters and be toxic at the same time. Heads up on that. I And I'm glad that there wasn't a situation were suddenly everything is okay because that kind of relationship really can’t easily be “fixed”.

I love how the romance and Charlie's friendship had equal importance. It has an HEA and a non white interracial couple, heck yeah.


I recommend Fat chance, Charlie Vega for the lead alone. She truly is the MAIN CHARACTER. Living her MC life and i say this with lots of love. I know that many will fall in love with her

Crystal Maldonado's socials

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