Fat Angie

Starred review from January 14, 2013
High school freshman Angie sees herself the way everyone else does, as “Fat Angie,” until KC Romance, “a model kind of beauty beneath the bad-girl garb,” breezes into her small, conservative Ohio town. Angie is relentlessly bullied at school, as well as belittled by her mother and adopted younger brother. Angie’s heavily medicated family can barely communicate with each other, let alone face the loss and presumed death of Angie’s older sister in Iraq. When Angie and KC bond—first platonically, then romantically—over broken homes, classic TV shows, and their respective troubled pasts, Angie gradually becomes motivated to change inside and out. Charlton-Trujillo (Feels Like Home) offers a hard-hitting third novel that swings between incredibly painful low moments and hard-won victories. The abuses Angie suffers are hard to stomach—her mother can be truly cruel (“No one is ever going to love you if you stay fat,” she tells Angie at one point)—making the happiness the teenager is able to find, both through KC’s help and her own persistence, come as a relief. Ages 14–up. Agent: Andrea Cascardi, Transatlantic Literary Agency.

Starred review from May 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-A father who abandoned the family. A couldn't-be-bothered mother. An adopted brother who is a criminal in the making. A high school full of peers who relentlessly tease her following a failed suicide attempt at a basketball game. And the only person who really understands her-her older sister-is being held hostage in Iraq and is believed to be dead by everyone except Angie. This is Angie's life. Then a gorgeous, punk-rock chick with a mysterious past, KC Romance, begins taking an interest in her. While the teen toys with the idea that she may be "gay-girl gay," she also begins to channel her pain and uncertainty by making her sister, a former state champion, proud by trying out for the varsity basketball team. Not only does Angie make the team, but she also leads it to a pivotal win. She returns home from the game to discover that her sister's body has been found. An explosive confrontation with her mother following the burial leads her to begin to see her otherwise-cold mother through a new lens. The author ends the story with no resolution in Angie's relationships with her mother and KC, leading readers to forge their own conclusions. The voice of a dry and direct third-person narrator works in a story laden with heavy topics, including war, death, suicide, cutting, bullying, and homosexuality.-Nicole Knott, Watertown High School, CT

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2013
Entrancingly eccentric prose, a protagonist "jam-packed with awkward" and a military sister missing in action coalesce into a memorable romance that's rockier than might be expected--and more realistic. Fat Angie's sister, "the fulcrum of their family machine," was captured nine months ago and shown "on Iraqi television, tied to a chair, blindfolded and bruised." Family, national news and everyone in Dryfalls, Ohio, presume she's dead--except Fat Angie. After a very public meltdown, Fat Angie faces bullying at school and "all kinds of weird sadness" at home, including maternal comments like "No one is ever going to love you if you stay fat." Into this anguish materializes KC Romance, a slang-talking new girl in combat boots and skull-and-crossbones fishnets. She defends Fat Angie; she likes Fat Angie; she calls her, simply, Angie. Angie falls "heart-forward into KC's dark eyes," and the girls are "gay-girl gay" together (their affectionate term). But Angie's tongue-tied, and KC has secret pain; a "sad awkward" keeps cropping up. Like their relationship, and like Angie's lionhearted attempt to emulate her missing sister's backbone on the basketball court, Charlton-Trujillo's prose has a peppery flavor, pointedly carbonated ("You break it. You know? My heart") and wryly funny. Unfortunately, fatness is a misery symbol--it's post-weight-loss, "not-so-plump Angie" who finds happiness. Creative prose and sharp interactions, marred only by some stereotyping; a fresh read nevertheless. (Fiction. 12-16)

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July 1, 2013
Fat Angie's mother ignores her, her classmates bully her, and her beloved sister is presumed dead in Iraq. So Angie is surprised when beautiful new girl KC Romance treats her like an equal and a friend--even a love interest. Charlton-Trujillo's choppy third-person narration is unique but distancing, allowing readers to observe Angie's traumas and successes but not fully experience them.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)