Thank you to the author for this fantastic novel with a fat main character who doesn't hate herself. Body positivity has a huge part in this book as well as preferring personality over physical appearance.
This book also features fanfiction, which is not what I love and was the only thing I didn't enjoy in the story. However, if you don't like that you can skip the fanfiction it doesn’t take anything away from the story.
And what a story! Marcus, a famous actor, is tagged one night by one of his fans who is fat shaming another fan's cosplay. Far from finding this funny, Marcus asks April on a date and thus start a tender love story. Everything would be perfect if Marcus wasn't lying to April, who has been for the last two years his best friend online.
If the love story is sweet the side stories are full of hard felt feelings. Marcus and April, both have difficult relationships with their parents. Marcus's parents, two professors, never understood their son's dyslexia and April's parents don't accept that they have a fat daughter.
Dyslexia and fat shaming are the main themes in this book and it is wonderfully done. Marcus struggles with his dyslexia and the book shows how he deals with it and how society perceive people with dyslexia.
Dear April doesn't describe herself as chubby but as FAT without it being a bad word. She feels good in her own skin and doesn't want to deal with people who don't accept her like she is. She is going through so much fat shaming online and in person but nothing keeps her down and I love her for it. She truly is a role model for fat people and we need more books like this, not only for overweight people, but for everyone, to make them understand how hard it is to go through life with people's judgement. It is not our weight that is holding us down, but the way people treat and perceive us. This book shows that fat people aren't lazy people, they can be as passionate as everyone else. Fat people shouldn't be ashamed to eat what they want. "Well intended" people should stop giving well meaning advice that we didn't ask for, and parents shouldn't assume and keep telling their children that no one will ever love them if they are fat. April is me, but a stronger version of me, and I aim to be as brave as her.
As for the other main them, less discussed but still as important, it resonated with me as well, as I am suffering of dysorthographia and struggle in everyday life as well. Only writing this review makes me anxious, but I am doing it because it is important to me and no one can take it away. Marcus has dyslexia, has been judge because of it and has since tried to hide it, thus giving people a different version of him, a shallow version of him, so that no one will be able to see his flaws.
Many people judge me for my choices of books (not serious enough), but those books, although romanticized, talk about real societal problems and make us see the other side of someones feelings or make us understand our own feelings.
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