Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot

Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot.

Heather Wells Rocks!

Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two -- and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls . . . and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen -- not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives -- even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective!

But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong . . .

I love Meg Cabot and all that she writes. This was definitely no exception. I read it all in about three hours, most of which were interrupted because I was at work, but I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. She was definitely aiming at people, like me, who feel uncomfortable in their skin at a size 12 and trying to talk them into feeling better about themselves, but she did it in a very clever, mildly cute way.

The fact that I got to snitch it from the library because it was being discarded didn't hurt any either. I'm not fully sure where they send their discarded books, but I doubt they end up in the hands of a new reader, which is a little disappointing. I plan on either handing it to my little sister to read when I get home, or donating it. The cover is ratty and the pages are yellowed, but the binding isn't about to fall apart and someone else can definitely read it with no problems. (I suppose the BBQ smothered book might be a different problem.)