Sugar

A shell like this one, beautiful to begin with, can get cracked and slivered, and then time, the tides, maybe even the wind, tumble and toss it, and it becomes something new, a perfect version of itself.

I'm very torn about this book. I do appreciate the author's decision to tackle this very sensitive topic and also some of the messages from the final chapters, but I don't agree with her overall approach. From the moment Even stepped into the picture I knew Sugar would try to lose weight for him. She had so many reasons to try to do it before, yet she never did. And what's even worse to me is that she started standing up to her family's abuse only as a consequence of her relationship with Even and I'm still not over the fact that she didn't turn in her brother and Caleb for causing Even's death. He should be in jail not running around harming people. I'm actually still furious about this aspect and I came close to giving it a 1 star just for this alone. It's great when our lives are influenced positively by our friendships, but liking someone shouldn't be the sole catalyst for change, it needs to come from within too, and she didn't question anything before he came into her life, she just went along with all that abuse and I don't know if I can accept that.

Perhaps there are a lot of people out there with this extreme level of helplessness and they are like that probably due to the abuse they've endured, but still, it feels reading this book would just enable them. I don't agree with this indirect message that you need to wait for this perfect person to come along (slender, attractive, smart, good-mannered) and love you unconditionally and therefore teach you to start loving yourself. I mean, what are the odds of this happening? How many overweight, with low-income, emotionally and physically abused women have had a prince charming rescue them from their horrible lives? I reckon there aren't too many cases.