Book Review : Dumplin' // Julie Murphy

Synopsis : 

Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

Rate : 2.7 / 5 ⭐

Review :

❝I’m fat. It’s not a cuss word. It’s not an insult. At least it’s not when I say it.❞
- Julie Murphy

Reasons as to why I liked this book.

Fat girl on the cover.
Title is Dumplin’
Which means a fat girl is the main protagonist.
And the fat girl decides to enter a beauty pageant clearly meant for the stereotyped pretty ones.

So lets get down to it in detail shall we.

Willowdean is a 16 year old fat girl at high school who also has a part time job where she has a crush on a guy. Her mom’s a winner of the beauty pageant and runs said pageant.

She has a pretty best friend and the one she loves the most is her Aunt Lucy who dies six month prior to when the story begins, the aunt is also a very fat lady.

Now this book was amazing because there were times where Willowdean stood up to the bullies when Patrick bullies this other fat girl (Millie) or other girls who don’t fit the stereotypical beauty standard. She talks about fat girl problems like thighs chaffing, hard to find pretty clothes her size and even about how judgmental other people get when they see her size.

The story was nice too. It wasn’t about the fat girl being the bad girl or her even trying to lose weight to get some scores. She was simply entering the pageant as herself, as a fat girl, to prove that she also can do it. As she says in the book ‘go big or go home’.

But (of course there was going to be a but)

She is hypocritical and sometimes she contradicts herself. She defends the other bullied girls but then says how happy she is not to be in their position and talks about how she is much better than them (in a not so very nice way).

I’m fat, but Millie’s the type of fat that requires elastic waist pants because they don’t make pants with buttons and zippers in her size. Her eyes are too close together and her nose pinches up at the end. She wears shirts with puppies and kittens and not in an ironic way.

She is sometimes selfish. At one point she admits that she is selfish for a reason (spoiler so not going to mention why) but there are times where I thought her being like that was just her being snarky and bishy.

And there is this girl she doesn’t like simply because she is good at everything she isn’t. And if that girl is a mean bish then I’ll get it but no she is a humble and nice one but she hates on her for no reason.

She says that no one should judge another by their body and a couple pages later she’ll be hating on all the skinny girls because they have a body she doesn’t have.

My Scientific Opinion: This place is a shithole and all the girls who work here are vapid skanks who treat me like El’s charity case friend. 

That was one issue I had with the character, where she kept contradicting herself every five chapters or so. Another issue was how rude she was to her best friend, El and her mother. Her best friend tries to support her in the pageant by entering but Willowdean gets pissed about it. And at first I was not siding with the mother because all she did was ask Will to lose weight but then later on it was clear that she wanted Will to take care of herself.

There was a part where Will throws away the healthy dinner her mom has prepared for her and has a couple of pretzels and a soda. And when her mother tries to encourage her to get her work done after she enters the pageant, Will is like so mean to her.

Third one was the book had none of what it promised in the synopsis. The actual pageant itself happens in the last fifty pages or so. Most of it was unwanted angst and love troubles.

Which brings me to my fourth issue. The love triangle. It was a pointless one. Bo is a hot guy at her workplace and Mitch is from the football team. I genuinely liked Mitch's and Will's friendship. I think the love drama was unnecessary there. And I wasn't a huge fan of Bo too.

Basically wished there was a lot less romance angst and more pageant and body positivity stuff. So would I recommend this book? Not really but I wouldn't say do not read it either. It all depends on you.

With Love,

pictures and synopsis credit : goodreads

certain quotes taken from the book