Worth the Weight by Mara Jacobs

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥

For every girl who's downed a pizza (or eight) after breaking up with The One

I wasn't blown away by this but I didn't hate it either. It was one of those middle-of-the-road ones that had its moments but didn't really sink in and make me want to trade lives with the h or anything.

She: Chick who's gotten her life together after a long battle with obesity and wants to go back to her hometown to celebrate her success with a quick fling with her then bad-boy boyfriend. This is a big deal because she hasn't felt confident enough to get intimate with anyone since him because she put on a bunch of weight and generally lost her mojo when they broke up

He: Small-town guy and former bad boy whose plans to get out into the Big City are smashed due to difficult family circumstances including bad marriage, disabled child and money troubles. Yikes.

Conflict: They come from different worlds and she has to choose between staying in the town she grew up in and her new life in the big city aka Detroit. 

It was kind of interesting reading about the h's problems with weight. The tone was a bit too squishy and old-school romantic so when there were modernisms such as the author's use of "fuck", they just seemed horribly jarring and discordant with the generally old-timey tone of the book. Not that I mind rough language, you understand, it's just that the whole rhythm didn't quite match up. 

Also, it seemed the the h went through a fat-phase after her high school romance with the H, and the breakup was one of the reasons for her spiral. But they meet again after she gets that part of her life relatively under control so he only hears about her issues from her later. It was unclear to me how the fat-theme really drove the story forward except to show that she made some big changes to take control of her life and becomes a better, more competent individual for it. She didn't really seem like a happier person for it, because she's obviously looking for validation from a boyfriend she had like a million years ago. But I could be reading too much into things.

Also, the hero was a bit too beta for me. He seemed to have been defeated one too many times by life. Mostly he was just really passive and hadn't really done anything except keep his head down and be all stoic and work-horse-y which isn't my favorite. But generally it was an ok read, the writing was fine and I didn't hate it.