Her advice to me is this: You are fat. Do not give them that foothold. 
 She's not wrong. There really are people in the world who have ready a list of adjectives about a fat person--including lazy, stupid, messy, incompetent--that they are certain describes her before she ever opens her mouth. And that is unimportant, because I won't let it be important. 
 This is a beautiful, touching book that deals with body image, and the issues in it are things I think all women (and some men, although they won't admit it!) will understand and relate to. What I love about it is that it addresses the concept of perception. Like it or not, society has a negative perception about people who are overweight. The main character is a wonderfully strong and smart person, but people will not always see that when they look at her, due to her being overweight. Her grandmother is aware of that societal prejudice, she does not want anything to hold her granddaughter down. First impressions matter, and appearance matters, however sad the reality is. 
 I run through the idea, the seductive, twining, choking-vine idea that everything could be easier. Everything could be simpler. That I never have to feel like this again. That skinny is so much easier than fat. 
 Ashley Perkins is fucking awesome, and she knows it. 
 I am also valedictorian, class president, former volleyball team captain, and was voted both Most Likely to Succeed and Best Personality two years in a row in our school's yearbook, which is really more of a pamphlet. I scored the winning point during the state volleyball finals last year. Unfortunately it was because I spiked the ball into the face of our rival captain, but still. I have a Platinum Star (which is an A plus at normal, less weird schools) in AP Organic Chemistry. 
 AP Organic Chem! That's some serious smarts right there (from a person who has gotten...not quite an A in Organic Chemistry). So she's smart, she's popular, she's fantastic! But she also has a grandmother who only sees one thing about her... 
 She's fat. And her ever-loving, ever-concerned grandmother feels like that is the one thing she should focus on changing, because that's the one thing that initially matters. 
 But my grandmother thinks that not being fat is the part of me I should focus on. That being a size 18 (or sometimes 20) will ruin my life. She says, "You do not deserve to be automatically dismissed for utterly arbitrary aesthetic reasons that have nothing to do with your worth as a human being." 
 Her grandmother is not some random, cranky old grandma, she's as perfect of a person as one could ever expect. Her grandmother is perfect. Beautiful, elegant, smart...she's a surgeon, for god's sakes. As much as Ashley doesn't want to listen to her grandmother, her words are hard to ignore. Ashley was never even aware that she was anything but normal until her grandmother mentioned it to her when she was thirteen. 
 That's when the word fat became something real. Something that would follow along behind me and settle in dark corners and slither around the back corridors of my mind. Whether or not I acknowledged it, the idea was inside me. 
 For my birthday that year, she gave me my body. Or her idea of it. 
 Every year since, on her birthday, her grandmother has given her a coupon good for one shopping trip per every 10 pounds lost. Every year, the bribes increase in value, from a shopping trip to a trip in Paris, to a new car. But this year's gift...and bribe, trumps them all. 
 Ashley Maria Perkins. Weight-loss surgery in exchange for four years of tuition at Harvard University. 
 Harvard University is her dream come true. Seemingly, weight loss surgery is an easy way out. 
 A dieter can try and a dieter can fail--and does most of the time--and dieting doesn't work because it's more than calories in and calories out, these journals tell me. Dieting doesn't work but it's not the dieter's fault that they're weak. And it's not the fat person's fault they're fat. But that can be fixed and that can be rearranged--literally--and everything and everyone can live happily ever after. 
 As much as she doesn't want to change herself, as much as she doesn't feel the need to conform to what her grandmother feels she should look like, an idea once implanted, will take seed, and that idea keeps nagging and bothering Ashley. Is losing weight really that bad? What is she willing to do to reach her dreams? In making her decision, Ashley is going to have to confront some demons within herself. 
 Having to prove myself, over and over. 
 I have never allowed myself to acknowledge this, not really. More important, no one was ever supposed to know. Somehow, I really believed no one ever suspected I had this frantic, terrified center, a churning, overheating engine constantly propelling me forward. The energy behind everything I do. Everything I am. 
 I like that her grandmother is not a villain. She is strict and adamant in her beliefs, but while unreasonable, she is not evil. She is a perfectionist, she has only the best intentions, and she has a heart, we see it, especially when she is dealing with Ashley's friend Jolene. She is cruel at times, but I feel like she is unintentionally so, with the kind of ignorance that comes with thinking "I'm only doing this for your sake." Her cruelty isn't so cruel as it is, more or less, a well-intentioned love of sorts, however ignorant. 
 She checks her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and then smiles at me again. "You finally know how important this is. You're better than your mother ever was, and I am determined to give you every possible advantage." She opens her door and slips out, taps up the stone path in her kitten heels. 
 In case I haven't made this clear throughout my review, I thought this book was fantastic. It was well-written, the main character is just a person. Weight is always a sensitive issue and this book never made me feel like I was reading a book about a fat girl. She is a person before she is her size, she is not defined by her size. She is defiant, funny, interesting, not a pitiful character by any means. This book makes the main character a strong person by her own rights, it makes her personality, what drives her, a more significant issue than her weight. This is not a book about losing weight, it's a book about finding yourself. 
 All quotes were taken from an uncorrected proof subject to change in the final edition.