I got an EARC on Netgalley. This book was the perfect travel companion, though definitely not to be read when hungry! I enjoyed Bluebelle’s story, it’s fun and cute and makes you think. Loved the body-posi vibes as it teaches us the importance to love ourselves.

Rating: ★★★★

Bluebell, aka BB or big bones is 16 and not sure what she wants to do with her life but what she does know is that she doesn’t want to go back to school after summer. To this end she strikes a deal it’s her mum to go for a barista apprenticeship and join a gym to try and improve her fitness. Although she’s overweight she has a good self image but her sister has an accident that causes B.B. to reassess her attitude to her body and keeping it healthy. This is a great ya title, with some important messages about being yourself and not conforming to the stereotypical ideals that the media impresses on girls. BB is a great character, I would have loved to have her as a friend when I was a teenager. The book is also a bit of a hymn to the pleasures of good food and it had me salivating several times!

I'm really sorry, but I didn't enjoy this book. I am usually a fond reader of YA, but I couldn't find any character that I could relate to, or was at least believable.

Sorry!.

I was not a fan of the book. I thought it was going all about body positivity but all the MC does is talking about food and there is no real plot.
There's a good message about being healthy has nothing to do with being skinny and I liked that but this is it.

Published on International Women’s Day, Laura Dockrill’s Big Bones introduces us to the wonderful Bluebelle, aka BB, aka Big Bones.

After a visit to the nurse, Bluebelle is encouraged to tackle her weight and to keep a food diary, documenting everything she eats over one hot summer. But she is happy just as she is, thank you very much.

This book is Bluebelle’s food diary and it’s a joy to read. Rather than being plot-driven, it’s Bluebelle’s voice that really makes the book. She is a character that I really wish I’d read when I was a teenage girl.

Here are just five reasons why you can’t help but love Bluebelle:

1. She’s sassy, confident and body positive. She genuinely loves her body as it is.
2. She loves food with a passion. (Warning: This book will make you hungry.)
3. She’s relatable. She doesn’t necessarily have a plan for her future, but she’s driven all the same.
4. She doesn’t worry about what people think or what the ‘normal’ thing to do is. When she fancies Max, she just goes for it and asks him out.
5. She knows what exercise is really about. It’s about wanting to make yourself stronger and your mind and body healthier, not about changing the way you look or trying to conform.

[My review will be posted at the link provided on Wed 11 April - 10am]

I may have mentioned this before, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but I love Laura Dockerill, she is such an underrated writer and such a fabulous person! Like, seriously, she is wonderful. And once again, she’s created a completely loveable protagonist, no matter how much I loved the narration and BB’s characterisation, I did find this a little uncomfortable to read in places.

A heart-warming teen story from the unique voice of Laura Dockrill, about Bluebelle, aka BB, aka Big Bones – a sixteen-year-old girl encouraged to tackle her weight even though she’s perfectly happy, thank you, and getting on with her life and in love with food. Then a tragedy in the family forces BB to find a new relationship with her body and herself. Moving, memorable and hilarious.

This is an interesting one, because this whole book is BB’s food diary. After having an asthma attack and being dragged to the doctors, BB is told she needs to lose weight and as a starting point is made to keep a food diary, only, she gets a little too into her writing project, as well as keeping track of everything she eats, we also hear about her crushes, her family and her inner most thoughts about life, society and everything else occupying her mind. BB is somewhat torn between loving who she is and the skin that she is in and also wondering if life would be better, easier for her, if she was similar in size to her sister or her friend. She was an endlessly fascinating character to read about and a brilliant narrator, Laura Dockerill really bought her to life and I was laughing and cringing along with Bluebelle. But.
Yes. There is a but.
I am someone with somewhat disordered eating. Always have been. Idk, the rational bit of me knows that some of my thoughts about food are completely irrational, but the rest of me still manages to fall prey to it now and again. You might be wondering why a book that has such a great body positive message could cause such a reaction – well. Every single chapter contains BB’s thoughts about food. What she is eating. How she is eating it. How she prepared it. How much she loved it. There were times, when reading about her describe in ridiculously intense detail butter dripping through crumpets, that the irrational bit of my brain started telling me about globs of yellow fat coursing through my veins and that if I so much as looked at a crumpet covered in butter I would turn into Violet Bueregard from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. You know the Violet! You’re turning violet, Violet! bit. Which is ridiculous. I know this, but I couldn’t help it. So, from that point of view, if you too are someone that has difficulties with food sometimes, take this one slowly. I read it in stops and starts because it is genuinely a well written, funny, light hearted book and I would love to see more open minded BB like characters on my pages, but you know. Food.

Basically, this book is kind of fab and any issues I had with it were mine and mine alone. I love Laura Dockerill, probably always will and we need more heroines like Bluebelle – so do check this out if you get a chance!

Content Warning: Mentions of food in detail and one scene that describes induced vomiting.

This was awesome! I was worried when I saw it had a plus-size main character, would it be focused on dieting and wanting to lose weight? How wrong I was to worry!

Bluebelle or BB to her friends in the fat positive (screw this thin person only 'body positive' bullshit) heroine that teen girls need! Even her thin younger sister Dove doesn't fit conventional feminine stereotypes of boys and make-up either. Instead she is a badass free-runner.

The side characters were an interesting bunch as well, Alicia was a nightmare, exactly the sort of person you don't want as a friend or boss. Max was a sweetheart. Dad seemed kind of useless but at least he was there for his daughters.

I loved that the book focused on the joys of food, both preparing and eating it. I thought the fact that it wasn't in traditional food diary format was a good thing. I feel like for a book about weight acceptance that the traditional format (e.g. breakfast - cereal etc) might be triggering for some people. I guess the mentions of food in general might be but at least it was pretty much all positive. There were maybe one or two foods that Bluebelle mentioned she didn't like but that was it. Oh the walkthrough on how to make yourself vomit in a childhood flashback was highly problematic in its detail.

Otherwise I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of numbers talk in general and Bluebelle's eventual gym attendance is for strength not, I repeat NOT weight loss. In fact on a return visit to the nurse at the end of the book Bluebelle is told she has lost weight and she replies that she doesn't care or that it doesn't matter, a scene that I absolutely love!

Laura's writing is fabulous though, it flows well, is beautifully descriptive - even foods I don't like/haven't tried I wanted to - and so so funny! Be careful reading the post Shepherd's Pie scene in a public places, you'll probably laugh out loud, it certainly had me grinning like a Cheshire cat.

A novel about a larger girl who loves her body? Sign me up! That was my reason for requesting this novel. Unfortunately, the reality didn't match up and I marked this DNF after getting a quarter of the way through. I kept going back and trying to finish this off, however, I couldn't stand BB the protagonist. She just seemed irritatingly obnoxious and after an entire quarter of the book I didn't care about her at all.

I DNF at 12% sadly. As a woman who is very overweight myself I thought I would enjoy and relate to this book but honestly the way Bluebelle talks about and describes food made me feel sick. I know it's hard to tell from 12% but I really could not stand most of the characters. Not because they were badly written, they were in fact very realistic, maybe a little too much so for me as it became quite triggery. I tried to finish it as I loved Lorali by Laura Dockrill and this isn't a bad book at all it's just really really not for me.

A love letter to food, sisters and female friendships, this novel follows the brilliant Bluebell (or Blue, or BB, or Big Bones) as she navigates a lifechanging summer. Laura Dockrill writes about the mundane and the ordinary in the same way that people write about diamonds, and this book is full of gorgeous descriptions of things like toast and Turkish supermarkets. Bluebell is the heroine that my chubby sixteen-year-old self really needed, and I'm so glad that she (and Cam, and Dove, and the rest of the brilliant cast of characters) are there for today's girls, big boned or otherwise.

Bluebelle, who loves food and has no problem with how she looks is being pressured to lose weight for her health.

This book is so honest. Dealing with society's obsession with looks. How we fall into the body image trap instead of loving ourselves. Also our need to be kinder to others. It's sad how easily we critique, without acknowledging our own flaws. Everybody is a critic and preconceptions cause unnecessary pain.

Intelligently funny, you will love the protagonist's smirk-worthy musings on just about anything that crosses her way/thoughts, and how she gets carried away. And I emphasize that her descriptions of things are really something else.

You might need to be a little patient with the frequent mentions of food and recipes. Generally her over the top commentaries represent opinions that BB has and you might also have on different aspects of life.

Heartfelt, showing the power & importance of family, you feel like you're living the protagonist's height or plight, and it is refreshing and glorious. And so full of hope.

This was absolutely fantastic. Stand-out UKYA. Funny and smart and feelgood and with the BEST descriptions of food I've ever read. Not to be read hungry. I now wish it was summer & I could wear all my patterned floaty dresses again.

So sorry but I DNF'd at 15%. I found it too triggering for me re food and weight unfortunately, and didn't have that excitement to read on and find out what happened next. Thanks for the opportunity however.

I've never read a Laura Dockrill book before but now I'm going to have to buy her whole backlist. I loved Big Bones—the descriptions of food were transcendent. The paragraph on different types of muffins was so exquisite I practically had an out-of-body experience reading it—an out-of-body experience in which my body went to the nearest coffee shop and ordered every muffin they had. Although, when Bluebell gets food poisoning and then has to clean out a cupboard of mouldy old food, I felt Dockrill was suddenly using her supernatural writing skills for evil, instead of good. Bluebell also feels like a real teenager without being irritating, which is a feat in itself—and her swoon-inducingly beautiful descriptions of food never feel pretentious, either. What a book

Laura Dockrill is one of my favourite writers. She’s hilarious and inventive and no matter what she does, I always fall in love with it. It’s no different for Big Bones.

I loved reading about Bluebelle, a character who talked so candidly about her weight, but never fell into that terrible ‘pretty for a fat girl’ mentality that needs to go and light itself on fire. It was all about body positivity. There was no shame attached to her weight and the lifestyle choices she needed to make to get healthy were decisions she came to on her own, never buckling to external pressures until she was ready for the benefits.

When reading this, you are going to be hungry. It’s just a fact. Each chapter is split up into what Bluebelle is eating at that moment and some much of it sounded delicious. Laura Dockrill is so talented with imagery and sensory descriptions that I was surprised to look up and not find a roast dinner in front of me. As well as being a story about change, Big Bones is a love letter to food.

As well as Bluebelle’s personal journey, you get to hear about her parkour-crazy sister Dove and the very weird and one sided relationship between her divorced parents. It was quirky and weird, but while reading, I got invested in each and every one of them. Especially Dove. She and Bluebelle had such different mentalities, so it was fascinating to see them interact and use their Sisterly Bond to get through to one another better than anyone else could.

It was refreshing to read about an overweight character, one of the most underrepresented body types in YA and it’s definitely encouraged me to find more. (Dumplin’ is bumped to the top of my TBR!) It’s also been a while since I’ve read a diary format before and I find that storytelling method so immersive, I read Big Bones in one sitting.

Overall, Big Bones is a fantastic book by a fantastic author. After you’re finished reading it, you’re going to want seconds…and thirds!

I went into this expecting a cross between Bridget Jones' Diary, by Helen Feilding and Dumplin' by Julie Murphy. What I got was totally different!

Bluebelle Green (BB) is tasked with keeping a food diary, but she records everything. At times, I found the 'stream of consciousness' style of writing quite overwhelming. Also, after the first few page-long descriptions of food and meals I had to start skipping these because the detailing made me feel a bit sick. Leaving those issues aside, BB is a great character; funny, confident, strong-willed and easy to root for. I loved the other characters, too especially Max, Cam and Dove. I could take or leave the Mum and Dad and found their bickering annoying. Alicia, BB's boss, is obviously meant to be a cow.

This is very much a coming of age novel, where the main character's struggles are internal - how does BB steer a course as a happy fat person, in a world designed for thinner people? Eventually, she finds a way to do this, and more. A positive, uplifting read.

Thanks for the publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you want a feel good read then this is the one for you! Big Bones was an entertaining read and shows you the importance of loving yourself, looking out for family and friends and finding out what really matters. It's a book that helps bring out body positivity in a unique way and the character of BB will certainly stick with me for a long time.

Big Bones dealt with the main character's attitude toward her weight and her acceptance of herself in a really well written way. I very much enjoyed reading Bluebelle's story.

This was such a sweet, positive book surrounding the wonderfulness that is food and that strange purgatory between the way you look and the stigma surrounding fatness. Bluebelle, the story's protagonist, is a wonderful main character who owns and loves her body, even though she struggles with the way she looks sometimes. The fact that she gets the guy and has a happy ending makes for such a different story about a plus sized lady, and it made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside while I was reading it. It's a powerful little spark of a novel that has so many parts of it that makes you just want to give it a big hug, that I want to press it into the hands of every girl and woman I know.