Reviews

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

lizerature's review against another edition

5.0

This book was so uplifting. I felt so empowered

mdevlin923's review against another edition

4.0

Willowdean Dickson, self-proclaimed fat girl, is completely content with her body. She and her best friend, Ellen Driver, are ready for summer and staying cool in the Texas heat. When Willowdean starts working at Harpy's, she meets Bo-a gorgeous private school athlete. As the summer progresses, Willowdean and Bo start seeing one another; and normally-confident Willowdean is questioning what people will say about their relationship...and her body. So Willowdean (partly inspired by her feelings about herself and Bo and partly because of her recently deceased Aunt Lucy) 'decides to challenge the status quo and signs up for the Miss Clover City beauty pageant. Along with Ellen and some new friends, Willowdean takes on a beauty pageant.

A heartwarming story with amazing body positivity, a sweet romance, and a focus on friendships mother/daughter relationships.

heather_nicole6254's review against another edition

funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

sophiaknudsen's review against another edition

3.0

Awesome concept and not-stellar outcome. I didn't any big issues with this book, but I know this is not one that will stick with me. I did really enjoy the setting of Texas and the theme of being confident regardless of size. Just an OK book.

threegoodrats's review against another edition

4.0

My review is here.

brisingr's review against another edition

1.0

It was the attitude that came with knowing how ridiculous people thought she looked, but never changing a thing because she felt good about herself.

Changing the rating to one star, because I cannot, for the life of me, remember anything about the good parts in this book. Just the fact that I felt sick all throughout reading it.

I’m a fat girl. I, more than anyone, wished to see in this book what I would have needed in the early stages on my own teenage years. And yet, this book fell flat. It’s a disappointment.

Dumplin’ tells the story of Willowdean, a young fat girl living in a small town in Texas, as she learns to navigate her life after an important loss. She works, sighs a lot even when she’s not really supposed to and leads a pretty normal high school life. That’s it, until a decision will turn her into one of the unlikely candidates for a beauty pageant.

I dislike a lot the way in which this book has been promoted as this new perfect book, with tons of self-confidence and nice messages regarding body positivity. That’s what I was expecting as well: a main character that feels good in her skin and is not afraid to let others know it too. Instead, our Willowdean is an insecure mess for most of the book, and lots of her thoughts processes were just sad and depressing. It mirrored so much of my own thoughts from when I had a low self-confidence that sometimes it was hard to breathe. I wouldn’t have minded so much if it was not meant to be this revolutionary contemporary on such topics. But I came here for feel good things, and I was not given that.

The word fat makes people uncomfortable. But when you see me, the first thing you notice is my body. And my body is fat. It’s like how I notice some girls have big boobs or shiny hair or knobby knees. Those things are okay to say. But the word fat, the one that best describes me, makes lips frown and cheeks lose their colour.

Plus, Willowdean is just an over-all very unlikeable character. I know at fault is probably the first person’s narrative (which is never a plus in my view), but she felt very detached from the story and I felt more real the voices of the secondary characters. She is indecisive and moody, refuses communication when is actually tried and she’s a hypocrite who judges EVERYONE around her. She skinny shames other girls, shits on girls in her situation and has a comment at ready about anyone she meets. It’s horrible and makes all her actual positive words fade and turn into just big nothings.
The only way in which this book directly shows a decisive stand on the issue of fat persons is Willowdean calling out her mom for the suggestions regarding her body. But again, even that is over-shadowed over and over again by Will’s own, identical judgements passed on other fat girls. However, I do appreciate that the ingrained reactions to fatness have been discussed and that bullying against fat people has been tackled. There has been a passage where the PMS excuse was called out, and that was beautiful as well. I can see that this book tried to weave through these issues and bring forth a piece that should have made you think, but it kind of failed.

Have you ever walked into a building that is dedicated to being everything you’re not? I want to be healthy, but I also want to be happy.

But the secondary characters are beautiful!! I swear I enjoyed each and every one of them; even when it felt like little to no effort was put into building their character, they all felt very real and lovely and I enjoyed finding out about them a lot. The setting has been well-built as well: it felt suffocating at time and very sad, just like a small town that no one has ever heard of should be. Of course, though, because I am me: I disliked the love triangle. Despite being dealt with fairly soon (it certainly doesn’t go on for tens of pages like in other novels of the genre), I still don’t think it was something necessary in this book and neither did it brought something new and meaningful to the story. For me, it just kindled my disinterest and dislike towards Willowdean.

I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you’re trying to become. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can.

The narrative style was okay most of the times, but nothing out of the ordinary. Just the fresh, simple style I was expecting from a book such as this. I’m neither a fan of Julie Murphy’s writing, but not a hater either. There were these instances when “quotable lines” were thrown into a very normal (and sometimes boring) dialogue just to give it off a more interesting/philosophical feel; and I usually fall for these kinds of things. But in this case it felt fake enough to have even me pick up on it.
The ending also fell flat. The story built up to the pageant, but all was dealt very fast and somewhat superficially, when the time finally came for Will’s “moment of fame.” There was no actual explanation about it, and neither at the end of it. It ended too abruptly after all the slow scenes that were before it and it was just another disappointment and detail that left me sour.

Still, this book is important simply for having a fat character as the main character, which is still a rare sight in YA (and literature in general) and I will appreciate it for it. I enjoyed it enough to reach the end, obviously. But there are too many details I just can’t get over.

I wish I would’ve had friends that were going after things they weren’t supposed to have. I was so scared of myself at that age. I was so scared that all the big things I wanted would never be anything more than wants.

Good friendships are durable. They’re meant to survive the gaps and the growing pains.

butterfly_bombshell's review against another edition

5.0

Really good. I preferred it over the movie.

bhnmt61's review against another edition

4.0

I think that there's a great temptation when writing about someone with body issues to make them into a perfect person, so that all the mean, cruel things that other people say and do are completely undeserved. Willowdean is not that person. She is stubborn and opinionated and for every time she says and does the right thing, there's a time when she is selfish and mean. That takes a lot of guts on the part of the author, and it makes this book ring true in a way it wouldn't if Willowdean was always warm-hearted, loving, and funny. There were several moments in this book when I did not like her at all.

But she is a well-drawn, relatable human being. She works as a character in a way that doesn't often happen for me in young adult chick-lit books, even when I enjoy them. She is a mess, just like every adolescent is a mess. She is a believable mix of boldly confident and bone-deep insecure--kind of like I was when I was that age. My issues might have been different, but that mix of confidence and insecurity felt the same.

In fact, I would have given this book five stars except that aside from Dominican Hannah, there are no visible people of color at this high school--no blacks, no Mexican Americans, no Asian Americans. I went to third grade through high school graduation at public schools in Texas, and even back then (in the dark ages) there were plenty of people of color around. Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, I wouldn't have noticed how often we whitewash the world around us, but I do now, and while I still thought this was a great book-- I even thought the ambiguous ending was perfect-- I think Ms. Murphy could have done better at representing a real public high school.

abiaustin's review against another edition

3.0

5 stars for everything having to do with the pageant, 2 stars for everything having to do with the romance

thefantasticalworldofsara's review against another edition

5.0

This book was an absolute delight and I loved every minute of it!

ps. The views expressed in this review are my own and do not reflect the views of Indigo Books & Music Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. #IndigoEmployee