"Ruth loves nothing more than curling up in front of the telly with a family-sized bar of chocolate. She doesn’t do diets and she certainly doesn’t do exercise. But all that changes when she’s invited to her school reunion.
Bullied at school for being overweight, Ruth’s first reaction is to rip the invitation into a million pieces. But then Ruth hatches a plan. She’ll lose the weight and arrive at the reunion looking gorgeous and glamorous, leaving her old classmates in awe. Especially her former crush, Zack O’Connell.
With the help of her friends and a new, unbelievably hot colleague, Ruth begins her transformation. With six months until the reunion, losing weight will be a piece of cake, right?"
It follows the life of Ruth as she embarks on a mission to lose weight so she can attend her school reunion with her head held high and show her former bullies that she’s not the person she was, that she’s over what they did and all the hurtful things they said. There’s two problems with this; she’s awful with diets and she’s not really over it at all.
Along the way, we meet the people in Ruth’s life that matter most – her best friend and flatmate, Billy, her work colleague and friend, Erin, her other flatmate, Theo, and her newest colleague, Jared. What I loved most about this book (if I HAD to pick one thing) would be that each chapter is written the view point of a character, be in Ruth (1st person) or any of the others (3rd person). It really helps you to get a rounded view of what’s happening and how everything affects them all. Better still, there are times when they recap things from a different point of view (I’m describing this so terribly, I’m sorry!) – so if Ruth and Billy are in a scene together and it’s first told to us through Ruth’s point of view, it’s then recapped from Billy’s; it’s a great way to see that people misinterpret things or see things in a different way.
The relationships in this book are fantastic. There was, perhaps, one point in the book where I found myself questioning where Billy has disappeared to but, oddly enough, the next chapter was his and he had just got into a relationship so, as in reality, he’d clearly gone a little M.I.A. whilst getting to know his lovely lady. The interactions are brilliant and true to life and the relationships are complex and comforting.
The characters are realistic, as are the struggles they go through. Jared and Ruth are dealing with their own demons and helping each other through, although they don’t necessarily realise it at the time – lots of misinterpretations and the like. Billy is Ruth’s older brother, Stephen’s best friend and Ruth’s best friend too. He’s there for her as a shoulder to cry on and a support whenever she needs it. Erin is the slightly promiscuous but kind-hearted friend who is on her own little journey that runs in the background of the story. Theo is a male Erin but without the journey – he is what he is and we love or hate him for it.
There’s humour, romance, and tragedy all wrapped up within this wonderfully written story. I was captivated from start to finish and was a bit gutted when I’d finished it, if I’m honest.
As I said at the start of this book, you think you know where it’s going to go but little things keep happening that make you question how sure you are about it and so you change your opinion, only for something else to pop up. It’s this writing style and structure that keeps you absolutely hooked – I had hoped for an early night last night but, nope, I had to stay up and finish it because I couldn’t bear to put it down.
It’s nice to read a book where, although there’s a happy end, it doesn’t entirely work out for the main character – she didn’t end up in the place she’d hoped but she’s happy and that’s such a life lesson to us all… You can’t plan for life but you can be happy with what you’ve got, even if it’s not what you expected. I loved it – it’s as simple as that.
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