Jes Baker has a lot of truth to tell and I'm glad she's telling it, although I'm not sure a book is the right format. I'm glad I found <i>Landwhale</i> because beforehand I had no idea who she was. And, I wanted to love this book. After all, I am also an ex-Mormon from an abusive family who struggles with weight issues (not rare). However, <i>Landwhale</i> seemed like a couple of pretty good blog posts fluffed out with enough repetitive "musings" and random experiences to fill a nearly 300-page book. The writing was too surfacy, immature, and disjointed for my taste.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley, Seal Press and Perseus Book for the eARC. All views are my own.</i>

What a bold, hilarious read. I could not put this book down. It was one of those I kept canceling appointments to stay curled up on the couch and read. The author manages to talk about some very serious stuff that is so hard for so many of us to deal with and make it genuinely funny and empowering. Jes Baker is a riot and so is "Landwhale"!

I give this a 3.5 out of 5.0 stars. This is a new book by writer Jes Baker, a brave and honest memoir sharing her weight battle and family issues during her life like many of us have had and can relate to. I know I had weight issues after having my son at 24, and I really struggled until about my mid 40’s. I was finally able to lose about 90 pounds mostly due to severe pain and medication issues, loss of appetite/nausea and being ill for several weeks when new doctors changed all of my medications at one time. I didn’t look at food the same for a very long time. So I do understand what the author means, and she is so very brave to put herself out there as an advocate for body image acceptance.

This book is worth checking out if you have weight issues or used to, or are close to someone who does, Jes has a great way of telling her story and sticking up for herself and others after going through what she went through. We all have different family issues we deal with. And dating issues, etc. It sounds like she’s put together some pretty great resources through her years in this area of work. An advance digital copy was provided by NetGalley, author Jes Baker, and the publisher for my honest review.

Seal Press
Publication date: May 8th, 2018

The author wrote a raw and real account of what life is like for a plus size woman. I was hoping to feel inspired after reading this, but didn't for some reason. I do appreciate the author's honesty and understand how difficult this was for her to write.

This is moving, heart-warming, funny memoir of Jes Baker's growing up while fat. I really enjoyed reading this, and appreciated the intersectionality inherent in fatphobia and cultural ideals. It was honest and endearing.

Great voice and interesting premise. I look forward to reading more by this author. I appreciated her perspective of living life as a fat woman and the prejudice the experiences on a day to day basis.

4 stars

“This memoir goes deeply into Jes's inner life, from growing up a fat girl to dating while fat. With material that will have readers laughing and crying along with Jes's experience, this new book is a natural fit with her irreverent, open-book style. “

I am conflicted by this book and I’m not sure why. Jes Baker shares a brutally honest look at her life and struggles of being a plus-sized woman in a world obsessed with perfection, her health issues as well as issues with her father. I was not previously familiar with Ms. Baker and her quest for fat acceptance and body love for all regardless of size.
I identified with her struggles with weight loss and the overwhelming amount of diets she has previously tried. However, I struggled with her lack of continuing to try to lose weight. I also struggled with why this would bother me, as it is not my life and why should I care how she chooses to live her life? Ms. Baker is both provocative and honest. I believe many people could learn a great deal by reading this book and I recommend it.
I admire her courage for putting her whole life out there for the whole world to comment on and discuss, even while I still struggle with the contents of this book. I cannot remember the last time I read a book which brought forth so many different emotions in me even long after the book was finished.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and Net Galley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

A quirky, entertaining, and thought-provoking read that's part mini-bio and part battle cry. I was impressed with the brave move to detail some of the harder moments in her life (that many can relate to), but also with her honesty and responses. The epub version is formatted better than the Kindle version, FYI.

Net Galley Feedback

I walked away from this book very conflicted, and I don't mean that as a knock on the author - she gets people thinking. I'd actually come very close to calling this a must-read.

Although this is a somewhat random hybrid of memoir, self help and fat-acceptance essays, I think the combination works. She lives all of that in her daily life so it makes sense that they'd be intertwined in pseudo memoirs. I don't read her blog and wasn't familiar with her name, so her writing was all new to me and I found her voice to be a strong one, and her a person willing to explore the myriad issues facing women today. She covers most or all of them, from the harassment women face online (including the decision of a plus-sized advocate to undergo weight loss surgery) to doctors asking about comfort food when you're there for birth control meds, and beyond. I felt like I'd love hearing her give a talk as I had a number of ohhh shit moments.

I found myself doing a double take when she shared her evening looking at herself in profile and trying to suck in her gut to keep the balance that her breasts should be more prominent than her stomach and later when she hated all images from the bikini body shoot. I always looked at the HAES movement as body acceptance and I found myself wondering whether she was so anti Diet Culture that she refused to consider whether she'd be happier in her own skin if she lost some weight. I think she was conflicted, something she later revisited when questioning whether she should take meds her doctor prescribed for a chemical issue when they had the known side effect of controlling hunger. There's no easy answer to this. I like her idea of liberation vs. love.

My one real issue was toward the end when she referred to Diet Culture as "also known as 'That No-Fun Fatphobic Lifestyle". That's really not fair and I think goes against her tenet throughout the book that Person A is the only person with input on what Person A's body looks like and whether they're happy with that. If skinny person B should STFU about Fat Person A, then it applies the other way around too. No one should be generalized based on a scale number, fat or thin.

All in all a weighty read, but one I truly enjoyed and would recommend. Thanks, NetGalley

I loved this book right from the very first word. This story is all about a young plus sized woman and her life. Now I know that is a very vague description it is a biography so this story is all about how Jess deal with being a plus sized woman in a petite woman's world. There is so much humor in this book that I couldn't help but chuckle, and as a plus sized woman myself I could really relate to some of the things that she mentioned. The book also talked about her childhood and how she was always bigger, but I liked how it wasn't all just about size it was also about her family, her relationships with other people. It was a very nice read and the author made every paragraph jump off the page this is one book that I won't forget for a long time. The thing that I liked the most though was how even though it was hard it showed her accept the body that she was give and I think that is a message that a lot of people need to come to terms with at some point in their lives. I also really enjoyed the footnotes that the author put in they are all done with a sense of humor that makes the tough situation lighter to read.

I loved Jes Baker's book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls, and was excited to read this memoir. Her willingness to be unflinchingly and yet compassionately honest about the really hard things in life is SUCH a breath of fresh air in our culture, and Landwhale is no exception. There were times it was hard to breathe while reading about the things Jes has gone through - that unfortunately many people have gone through and/or can relate to.

My one criticism is that the book was a bit all over the place - it seemed part memoir, part body-positive essay collection, and there were times where it didn't flow that well from chapter to chapter. That being said, every word Jes Baker's written in this book is 100% worth reading.

First, let me just preface this by saying that I am writing this review based on the Kindle version, which perhaps wasn't formatted in the same way that a physical copy of the book would be...

I really, really wanted to like this book. I really NEEDED to like this book. After delivering five (gigantic) children, I went from loving my slim body, to desperately trying to embrace my new fluffy body. It hasn't been an easy journey, and after finding this book, I felt immediate relief as perhaps I'd found a book that would help me navigate these self-love waters I find myself currently wading through.

First, on the positive side, the voice of the author is wonderful. I love her humor, I love how raw she is with her readers and how authentic she allows herself to be within the pages. A rare thing to find, indeed.

The frustrating part, however, was how disjointed to the writing was. And again, perhaps that is because this is a Kindle version and it wasn't formatted perfectly, yet. But getting through the book was so difficult, as nothing seemed to make any sense. Paragraphs didn't flow with ease into other paragraphs. Some of the writing seemed to wander into odd tangents, that left me feeling like I'd completely missed either the point or the joke. Which was so hard, because I could tell that I loved the author.

Perhaps I will give the book another chance one I get the opportunity to read it in it's physical form. I am grateful at least, that I was introduced to the author. What a fun, free spirit.

While I have never been subject to public name-calling or harassment, or anything like that (unless it was done behind my back, which hey, entirely possible), I could totally relate to Jes Baker's life. SO many things here are so me, that it's really too personal for me to put out there. Size issues, dad issues, memories of being the fat kid when I wasn't even fat as a kid (I just always heard it from people, mainly just my grandfather, but I wasn't)... even the travel anxiety! I highlighted so many places, but my Kindle just died, so I can't list them all here.

The message of body liberation is such an important one. I don't know if I will ever get there.

I did have some problems with the formatting of the footnotes, especially when they popped up during passages that consisted of a numbered list. That could just be my Kindle, or maybe it just hasn't been formatted correctly yet.

This review can be found on Goodreads and may be edited at some point in the future.

Was hoping to laugh, and that didn't happen.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

I was excited to read this book. I thought that Jes would have a great story to share. Instead I found a disjointed account of her childhood, early romance, and traveling. I loved the parts of the book that actually had a story, like the Harry Potter Ride at Universal.
Yet the story is bogged down with numbered asides (I was so distracted with those and where they were located) and half finished stories. The story of her confronting her dad left me scratching my head. The author says she confronted her dad three times...over what???? I am not sure if this is ready to be mass marketed. It really needs some more editing.