Life in the Fat Lane

Cherie Bennett

Oct 2009 · Sold by Laurel Leaf

About this ebook

THERE'S A PERFECT GIRL at every school, yours included. You know her. Beautiful. Talented. Smart. Great parents. Cool boyfriend. You can’t even hate her, because, of course, she’s so nice.

At Forest Hills High, Lara Ardeche is that girl.

But things can change.

“Skillfully drawn, resulting in a compelling story. . . . An enjoyable and thought-provoking read.”—School
Library Journal

“Readers will be totally caught up in Lara’s struggle to find her true self under all that weight.”—Booklist

An ALA Best Books for Young Adults

Ratings and reviews

I read this a few years ago. Obviously, the book is about a perfect girl that becomes obese. She hates the way she looks and tries everything to shed the pounds, to the point where she diarrheas and throws up at the same time and falls asleep in her feces (disgusting). The whole theme of "accepting yourself" seems to contradict itself because the only reason she rids of her self hatred is because she starts to lose weight in the end.

Mixed feelings about this. The writing is very good and the storyline gets quite confronting when highlighting the treatment of fat girls by a harsh and unforgiving society - and the sad reality that people would rather lose an arm than be fat.The writer is spot on with Lara's feelings about gaining weight and her abject horror at 'being a thin person trapped in a fat person's body'. In saying that I hoped there would be a greater pay off for Lara after everything she went through; I would have liked the writer to expound on the benefits of not viewing girls through one lense only, to drive the point home thst we are more than our bodies and even though the world is superficial it is not that one-dimensional.

SPOILERS I loved it when she dumped the boyfriend. She's a strong character with self respect, and she was willing to put herself first even when it was hard.

About the author

Cherie Bennett has written many novels for young people, for TV (Smallville), and is an award-winning playwright. She lives in Los Angeles with her son and her husband, Jeff Gottesfeld, who collaborated with her on A Heart Divided, and their son.