Holding Up the Universe

Each December my book club does a white-elephant-style book swap, and this was my pick. I had no idea what it was about, because the back cover says exactly nothing about it! It sounded vaguely like a YA romance. Cool.

So my feelings about this are kind of complicated. I didn't exactly feel happy reading it, but I also don't know that happiness was really the goal - for a YA romance it felt very heavy. It's about two teenagers - Libby (who is fat and whose mom died suddenly and unexpectedly when Libby was 10 [and grief/anxiety were the impetus for massive weight gain]) and Jack (who has face-blindness and can't recognize anyone, including his own multiracial family) - and the weight (no pun intended) of carrying those things in the world.

On the one hand, it was good getting to “walk around in the skin” of these two people who are not like me. Libby is portrayed as a multi-faceted and interesting character that (maybe in spite of the author's intentions) is not solely defined by her weight, but also I felt the start of her story was taking it too far (as someone who had to be literally cut out of her house during a medical emergency). Like, it's not enough to just gain weight in the aftermath of trauma and let it be that, we have to add a humiliation/public shame component, and I wasn't thrilled about that. I liked Libby's relationship with Jack and how it grew, though it sucks that it started from a place of mutual violence against each other. The ridiculousness of high school and people sucking at being kind to others who are different than them was realistic, and Jack went through all of that while every single day every single person was essentially a stranger.

Romance was okay, but the ending and falling-in-love felt kind of rushed where nothing else in the book did.

This is what I know about loss:- It doesn't get better. You just get (somewhat) used to it.- You never stop missing the people who go away.- For something that isn't there anymore, it weighs a ton.