The Summer of Jordi Perez

I really enjoyed this book, and I'm so glad that it exists. It meant a lot to get to read a ya novel with a queer, fat girl protagonist. I loved that she was into food and fashion and owning her fatness while still grappling with taking up space in the world as a fat person. It felt authentic and we need more of these narratives. The only thing I struggled with about this book was the respectability politics and healthism it contains. There were a lot of passages where the protagonist goes out to eat burgers, but they all contained an emphasis on having small portions or splitting the meal, going to walk off the meal afterwards, and talking about how she could only eat a burger occasionally or she would die of a heart attack. None of these caveats would ever be stated about a thin character, and indeed were not said about any of the thin characters in the novel. It felt disingenuous, unnecessary and like something that the author inserted to make sure that the audience knew that the protagonist was the "good" sort of fat person. Fat people can enjoy food, have no moral obligation to eat healthy, in moderation, exercise or be healthy, full stop. I enjoyed this book immensely, but these kinds of ideas put a damper on the experience for me and would have been better left unsaid in my opinion.