Huge [Hardcover]

Sasha Paley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 22, 2007

April and Wil couldn't be more different, but both of them are spending the summer at Wellness Canyon -- otherwise known as a weight-loss camp.

April knows that if she could just drop a little weight, she would be popular like she's always wanted. She's saved up for months to afford Wellness Canyon, which is more like a posh spa than a sleepaway camp. While April can't wait to jump into all the activities, Wil can't wait to get out of there. Her parents own a chain of high-profile fitness centers, and she's pretty sure her mom and dad sent her to Wellness Canyon to slim down before any embarrassing stories about their obese daughter hit the gossip pages. To get revenge on her parents, Wil decides she's going to gain weight at Wellness Canyon.

It's bad enough that they have to share a room, but things really get ugly when April and Wil both fall for Colin, the sarcastic camp hottie. Are April and Wil destined to be frenemies all summer, or can they overcome their sizeable differences? Filled with everything great about summer camp (and none of the calories), this is a funny, emotional novel about learning to accept yourself -- no matter what your size.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Wil is a fat girl whose wealthy parents own a chain of fitness centers. April is a fat girl who has saved money to go to Wellness Canyon Camp, where an unwilling Wil is being sent by her parents. Upbeat April and sarcastic, unhappy Wil meet as roommates, two girls with very different goals. April wants to change her life and find the popularity she has always craved. Wil is going to gain weight to stick it to her parents. As the summer progresses, both girls change in ways neither could have expected. There are a few problems here, mostly the result of sloppiness. The girls go after the same guy, and when he humiliates them both, they decide to get even. Instead of coming up with something clever, Paley relies on the old laxative-in-the-drink gambit. Some mild expletives come late in the story, and there's no real explanation of how April could have saved $7,000 for camp. However, the characters are sharply drawn, and the often-amusing story does a good job of showing how everyday concerns are often overshadowed by the issue of weight. Cooper, Ilene
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Sasha Paley grew up in Chicago, where she spent a lot of time writing in

cafés and attempting to flirt with guys from Northwestern. Sasha now

lives in New York City, where she still spends a lot of time writing in

cafés and working on her flirting skills.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (May 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416935177
• ISBN-13: 978-1416935179
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,734,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Watch the TV show, skip the book... August 14, 2010

By Rebecca

Format:Paperback

I ordered "Huge" after falling in love with the utterly endearing ABC Family series of the same name. Screen adaptations rarely live up to their original source material, so I was expecting big things (no pun intended) from Paley's novel. But if you're like me and are interested in seeing how the book compares to the television show, you're going to be disappointed.

Beyond the title, the name of the main character, and the fact that it's set at a fat camp, the book bears few similarities to its TV counterpart. The show is everything the book is not--complex, charming, layered, sweet, funny, sad. The characters, so real and so vulnerable on screen, are nothing more than cardboard stereotypes on the page. None of the show's most interesting personalities (Alistair, Becca) are present in the book. There is no camper-counselor flirtation that parallels the George-Amber storyline, nor is there any mention of the fractured relationship between the camp director (here a bubbly redhead called "Melanie") and her father. Pretty much all of the elements that make the TV series sparkle are noticeably absent, leaving us with a straightforward "summer camp" story, and not a particularly interesting one at that.

Near the end of the book, there is a scene where Wil is caught reading "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky. It's a shame that Paley, obviously familiar with Chbosky's brilliant YA novel, didn't take a few clues from that work. Because even as general young adult fiction, "Huge" falls flat. The plot is thin, the characters one-dimensional. And although it's an easy read, there is very little incentive to keep turning the page.

Skip the book and check out the television series instead.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Kirkus Review of "Huge" September 9, 2011

By MJPF

Format:Paperback

HUGE (reviewed on May 1, 2007)

A clichéd, moralistic tale of lessons learned at fat camp. Two girls spar and then bond as summer roommates. Perky April has "saved all year... all of [her] birthday money. Christmas. Everything" to pay for Wellness Canyon because she wants to be thin and popular. (How birthday and Christmas gifts could possibly total "seven grand" for a girl with a single mother on disability is distractingly inexplicable.) Wil, in contrast, has rich parents who own a sleek gym chain; her fatness is their shame, so they force her to go. Both April and Wil lose weight over the summer, while they obnoxiously insult each other, become friends, kiss the same boy, plot revenge on him, fight more and make up. Paley unequivocally touts weight loss and repeatedly uses words like "waddled" about her fat characters. She also displays ignorance of physiology, equating fitness unquestionably with thinness. Appalling and simplistic. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 22nd, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4169-3517-9
Page count: 272pp
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too May 11, 2007

By TeensReadToo

Format:Hardcover

HUGE deals with a topic that is apparently in the media more and more these days (though I myself haven't seen it much): fat camp.

Wellness Canyon is a high-end fat camp where two very different girls, April and Wil, are paired as roommates. April has saved all year for this, despite a lack of support from her mom. She wants to lose some weight and gain the popularity she's always wanted. Wil wants to be anywhere but Wellness Canyon. Her wealthy parents have sent her there, as she's a public relations nightmare: they own the high-profile chain of Excalibur Gyms. Wil's revenge on them is to enter Wellness Canyon with a huge stash of sweets and be the first kid in camp history to actually gain weight while there.

Of course, as it's full of teenagers with raging hormones, there's more than weight loss going on at Wellness Canyon. When April and Wil start crushing on the same guy, football-playing hottie Colin, their relationship gets even more tense. Can they make it through the summer together and maybe even become friends?

A lot of HUGE is your typical summer camp story. Sasha Paley does a great job of creating at least two fleshed-out, interesting characters, though some secondary characters sometimes seem a little flat. Paley is a talented writer, but the popular-kids-are-mean message is maybe a little heavy, and, despite what the back cover says about learning to accept yourself, I felt like she was saying that being skinny is better than being fat, even if she never came out and said it.

Despite this, though, HUGE is a fairly satisfying read, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Sasha Paley writes next!

Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce