Customer Reviews

Alternate Beauty

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When you look at the cover it gives you the impression that it is about a woman who is a creative and proud bbw. I dont think one time in this whole book was the main character proud of herself. I have never read a character who was as depressing as Ronnie. The author constantly uses derrogetory descriptions of the big characters in the book. The whold point of this is the character Ronnie enters an alternate reality, and everyone strives to be big, where as she is fighting it. The other character seem to be proud of how they look, but in Ronnies' eyes, they are disgusting obese creatures. Not once does she find anything attractive in any character unless they are thin.

Don't waste your time with this book. There is no love no romance and definately isnt any positive role models in here!

Being a big girl myself, I was actually looking forward to this book the first time I picked it up. Then I started reading..

The story itself is basic and that isn't exactly disappointing. The wording is. It is clear from the way the book is written that the author certainly doesn't find fat even remotely beautiful. From themes on how fat women are, clearly, only fat because they're pressured so hard to be thin that they overeat..to the overused emphasis on "rolls and bumps" and how even the main character sees these things as horrid and negative. I was truly disgusted when I finished this book.

If you are going to write a book and market it under the idea of an "uplifting" sort of story, then please make the attempt at making the book something other than a "why am I fat?" lesson.

This book was nothing like I expected and everything that I expected. Strange huh?
Well, I expected there to be romance, which there wasn't alot of. I expected that the main character will i the end find out that who she is as a person is what really matters. Not what she looks like. I was right. Just like so many other chick lit books targeting the 'bigger' girls, so it didn't amke it all that interesting. I've read so many books like this, that this book NEEDED something to make it stand out better than the others, and it didn't.

If you want to read 'bigger' girl chick lit, pass this up and go for something better. A few WAY better suggestions are 'Good in Bed' by Jennifer Weiner, 'Jemima J' by Jane Green, 'Waking Beauty' by Elyse Friedman, 'Losing It' by Lindsay Faith Rech and 'The Next Big Thing' by Johanna Edwards. All those are 4 and 5 star wonderful books, in my opinion.

I'm a fan of the chick lit, and I particularly like stories about big girls - it's nice to have a heroine I can relate to in more than just spirit. This book, like a number of "big girl" chick lit novels (i.e., "Jemima J," "She's Come Undone"), left a bad taste in my mouth.

When I read about the "alternate universe" premise of this book, and saw the marketing blurbs describing it as holding a message for women of any size, I expected something uplifting, empowering, and generally positive (especially as I read the author's bio and found that she'd been a big girl herself at some point in her life) . As I read more and more of this book, I found nothing of the sort. Despite the fact that the main character (Ronnie) lands herself in an alternate universe where fat is the standard of beauty and she is the pinnacle of that standard...the descriptions, phrasing, and events demonstrate clearly that the author does not find fat to be beautiful, and (though there is a rather trite "beauty comes from within" message in the end) that if there was not all this societal pressure for women to be thin, we would all, in fact, *be* thin...since we are only fat because we overeat - because we are told not to eat.

This book is filled with pop-psychology "why I'm fat" reasoning (mommy doesn't love me, daddy's never around, I hate myself, food is love, ad nauseum), and tiresome cliches that do nothing to foster good self esteem in either the characters or the reader. In fact, toss in some of the strange subplots, and the book becomes a rather unfortunate collection of painful stories that speak volumes about the author who penned them.

On top of all this, the writing itself is underwhelming; consequently, I recommend giving this one a pass. Try something by Jennifer Weiner or Stacey Ballis instead.

So I was shopping on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and browsing overpriced books at Borders and I found this one amongst all the 20 something new romance books. I read the cover and thought (hey I am a size 28 too), its nice that there is a heroine who is plus sized, and then I read who the author was- and I realized she was a do gooder and I thought, oh this book will be formulaic.. In that regard, i was not disappointed, what I thought would happen did... However, I got drawn in.. I found that this was one of the few books that I read that understood that weight issues were not about how you eat as much as why you eat! The characterizations of how she was treated by others, how she felt about herself in life, in career and relationships was complex and interesting and almost painfully honest.. The characterization of her family was honest, humorous, perhaps a bit over the top, but still very honest. So often you read a book where someone grows a little personally and its like poof a magic fairy came and changed the whole darn world, I found this book more honest than that..

So I realize I have been marketed to.. and I bought the book (and paid 10% tax on it to boot).. but I enjoyed it.. I admit, I told several friends about it, and even cried a little when I read it.. because it made me think about a few things.

In some ways, it reminded me of the Spanish Melodramas that were designed in the 80's to educate people about STD's and AIDS.(Entertaining with a lesson) While I know that this book was written with a message in mind, the story was enjoyable, the reading level is not too high (fast read) and the characters are engaging. I am giving it a 5 out of 5, because, I find myself still thinking about it a few days later.. so I guess its worth a good rating.

If you want a book that has a plus sized character but does not ring as true or hit as close to home, try Inappropriate Men (one of the red dress ink books).

What is reality? Is it a tangible thing, the people, places, and things that are around us? Or is reality whatever we make it to be? I've always prescribed to the second theory, that you could change your reality by changing the way you look at life. What about an alternate reality? Is that simply other people looking at the world through different colored glasses, or an actual plain of existence different from the one we currently reside on? By reading the story of Veronica "Ronnie" Tremayne, the heroine of Andrea Rains Waggener's ALTERNATE BEAUTY, I discovered that it doesn't really matter one way or the other.

Ronnie is an overweight woman living in a world where women over the size of ten are looked down upon and ridiculed. You know the world I'm talking about-the one we're living in now. Ronnie, a size twenty-eight, has, in my opinion, a good life. She has a wonderful boyfriend, Gilbert, who, although not the smartest or most gregarious of men, has one wonderful thing going for him-he loves Ronnie for who she is, and her weight doesn't factor in to it. Ronnie also has a job at Luscious Landing Large Women's Clothing Boutique, where she's the manager. But over a lunch of-what else? Salad!-with her skinny mother, Ronnie discovers that the owner of the boutique, Cheryl, wants Ronnie to lose weight before she loses her job, because her overly-large size is disturbing some of their "smaller large" customers.

That night before bed, Ronnie makes a statement that will ultimately change her life. "Oprah's wrong. The key to happiness is living in a world where fat is beautiful." Thus begins Ronnie's trip into her alternate reality.

Suddenly, Ronnie's size twenty-eight is for the first time in her life an asset. This world Ronnie is in scorns thin women. The bigger the better, at least in this new reality, and for once, skinny women feel bad in her presence, and construction workers are whistling at her as she walks by. There's no Gilbert in this strange new world, but there are plenty of men who want to be with her, all nearly three-hundred-pounds of her, who can't get enough of her big, beautiful body.

Ronnie believes she's in heaven. For once, big is beautiful, and she has all the attention that she's ever wanted. Except now that she has what she wants, she can't seem to eat-and the glorious pounds that make her so desirable start dropping off. Now she's the object of disdain because she's losing weight instead of gaining it, and Ronnie begins to wonder if this reality is any better than the normal one.

Ms. Waggener has penned a fantasy romance that any woman, regardless of her size, will be able to appreciate. What woman doesn't have something about her body that she wishes she could change? It doesn't matter if you're a size eight or a size thirty, everyone has something that they don't like about themselves-or something that they fear others look down upon them for. ALTERNATE BEAUTY is a whimsical trip into the world of what-if, so settle in for an entertaining ride.

In the beginning, Ronnie Tremayne keeps telling herself she loves her body, while at the same time showing the discomfort and embarrassment she feels at being overweight. She also admits to being unhappy for so long it felt normal to her. Apparently in danger of losing her job because of her size, she contradicts Oprah's comment that "the key to happiness is loving yourself, and self-love comes from within" with her own belief that "The key to happiness is living in a world where fat is beautiful."

And that's what Ronnie wakes up to the next day--not all at once--it takes a while for her to realize why everyone is acting in an unusual manner. But there it is--a world where fat is not only beautiful but is a state to be worked toward and hoped for.

The concept of this book is original and thought-provoking. And the story becomes more so as Ronnie adjusts so well to her new world that she ends up losing her appetite. Living in a world where fat is considered beautiful, she'd been given permission to eat, something she'd been denied throughout her life by her mother and by herself. I don't want to give away the ending of this well-written, imaginative, most enjoyable book, so I'll just give a hint. On page 358, Ronnie tells a friend, "What you see is what you get. If you don't like it, well, that's not my problem."

Over salads that would not feed a mouse, her paper thin mother Audrey informs size 28 Ronnie Tremayne that her obesity is driving the overweight customers away from Luscious Landing Large Women's Clothing Boutique. The owner, her mom's friend Cheryl Land, expects Audrey to lose a lot of weight or lose her store manager's position.

Upset that even her boyfriend Gilbert cannot help her, Ronnie overindulges in an eating binge. That night she dreams of a world where fat is beautiful. When she awakens her fantasy ahs turned out to be true. She is the centerfold of beauty with her near three hundred pound body. Ronnie attends all the galas and men want her. However, as her she finds a lust for life, she eats less. Over time the perfect 28 becomes an imperfect 10, but inside Ronnie detests what has become of her and misses her Gilbert.

This fantasy romance is an insightful look at the American idealization of thinness and demonizing obesity. The story line is fun to follow as Ronnie finds her role as an ALTERNATE BEAUTY in the new world order not quite as captivating as she thought it would be; instead she learns that what is inside a person is what counts not calories. Though health concerns of someone obese or too underweight are passed over too lightly, fans will cherish Andrea Rains Waggener's intelligently insightful look at the cost to a person's happiness of the constant drumming of the never too thin ideal.

Harriet Klausner

I read this book once and a few times have tried to read it again but I cant seem to get past the first half of the book more than once. Its got an interesting premis but the characters arent very deep or 3 demensional at all. I think what kept me reading the first time through was morbid curiousity to see how it ends but now that I know how it ends I cant be bothered to read it all the way through again since the characters are so flat.
I have noticed that a lot of the negetive reviews are saying that they found it slightly offensive because of the way the main character looked at fat people and therefore the descriptions of those large people. In defence of the author and the book; I think the reason the book is written this way is that it is from Ronnie's prespective, a perspective that has been beaten to accept the idea that fat is ugly. Its part of her transformation that she goes from hating herself for being fat and thus thinking negativly about fatness to acceptance.
Further more as a large woman myself I am totally ok with admitting that the books description of "rolls and bumps" are totally accurate. That is the reality of being a big person.

"Alternate Beauty" by Andrea Rains Waggener is a winning book. All those who have ever struggled with being overweight will find this book fascinating, and even those who haven't will enjoy this book. The way Ms. Waggener weaves her story is entertaing, eye opening and thought provoking. Her easy to read way of writing also makes for a wonderful reading experience. I highly recomment taking the time for this one.