Dumplin'

Book 54 of my 2016 Reading Challenge
read from July 1 - 3

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

Summary (via Goodreads)
Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.
Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

My Opinion
I LOVE this author!  She captures the voices of her characters so well, the dialogue is excellent, and the situations are just ridiculous enough to be interesting but not so outlandish that I roll my eyes.  It was sweet without being over the top and hopeful but not perfect.

I laughed at two lines that capture southern living, "To my mom powdered iced tea is almost as bad as the possibility of being left behind in the wake of the rapture" and "there is no higher achievement for a southern woman than the ability to eat barbecue and walk away stain free".  

A Few Quotes from the Book
"She's gone. And we don't even have any pictures of her. The reality of her body wasn't something she liked having reflected back at her in the form of a photograph."

"I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you're trying to be. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can."

"Maybe fat girls or girls with limps or girls with big teeth don't usually win beauty pageants. Maybe that's not the norm. But the only way to change that is to be present. We can't expect the same things these other girls do until we demand it. Because no one's lining up to give us shit, Will."