Book ~ "Big Girl" (2011) Danielle Steel

From Amazon ~ Victoria Dawson has always felt like an outcast. When her little sister Grace is born, father Jim tells Victoria she was the tester cake and they finally got it right with the beautiful Gracie. Victoria grows up in her sister's shadow and though she loves Gracie dearly, she's anxious to leave home. The pain doesn't stop there, though. Her father calls her first job at a prestigious private school in Manhattan pathetic and Victoria begins a battle with her weight and her belief that she is unlovable (even though men pursue her). The premise of the story is sound but it doesn't ring true: the parents are two-dimensional cruel monsters and Victoria seems to have everything: fantastic job, amazing apartment, perfect best friends. It's hard to believe that her parents would still wield such power. Steel barely grazes the surface of an important topic but it's not reality that has positioned her at the top of bestseller lists.

I haven't read a Danielle Steel novel in about 20 years. A friend read it recently and said it was okay so I thought I'd check it out. It seemed like an interesting story, different from Steel's usual formula.

This story had so many possibilities ... it's a topic that most women today deal with. But Steel didn't do a good job with it ... it was very superficial.

Victoria's parents were horrible. Her dad was an A-hole and her mother was a wimp. Her dad kept reminding her that men don't like fat girls. At her heaviest, Victoria had 25 pounds she wasn't happy with ... the way her parents went on and on and on, you'd think she was at least 1000 pounds overweight.

Her mother kept reminding her that men don't like smart women. The reason her mother and sister went to college was to find a husband. In this day and age, my reaction was "Really??!! Are you serious??!!" What reality is Steel living in?

Victoria was surprised that Grace and her boyfriend had gotten engaged without asking their father's permission first. Really??!! Are we back in the 1800s?

The writing is very repetitive ... we are constantly reminded over and over and over and over:

• Boys don't like fat girls
• Boys don't like smart girls
• Victoria was named after Queen Victoria because she was so ugly
• Victoria looked like her ugly fat great grandmother
• Victoria was a tester cake and they got the batter right with Grace

It wasn't until Victoria was 30 and finally happy with a boyfriend that she could stand up to her dad's rude comments. Up until that point, she took it when her fatherly continually put her down about her weight, her "spinsterhood" and that she was just a lowly teacher. As she got older, Grace became a spoiled bitch to her and Victoria took it. I thought it was too bad that Victoria couldn't stand up to them on her own, even though she'd been seeing a therapist for years. She needed a man to validate her worth.

If you are a Danielle Steel fan, you'll probably enjoy it ... I didn't.