As someone who struggled with disordered eating patterns in my 20s, I didn’t find this book to be all that body positive. I was unnerved by some descriptions of statistics and behaviors while I identified with other parts (especially the need for the strong female friendships). I won’t badmouth it, but I also can’t see myself recommending it to any of my adult readers.

A universal problem for women weight loss fitting into society’s image of what we should look like.A group of women are filming a documentary on their lives on their obesity and the effect it has on the lives.This novel is open real raw and it made me laugh.Highly recommend, #netgalley #Waisted # Atriabooks.

This book moved me. It explored what it means to be a woman in society today. Snapchat filters, photoshop, all waging war against the every-woman. How can we compete with perfected images? How far would I go to achieve the perfect body, face, hair? What messages are we giving our daughters, sisters and nieces? This book is a wonderful discussion of womanhood, sisterhood and learning to love ourselves.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get through it. I found the book to be difficult to relate to and the characters to be boring. I wasn't able to finish it.

I was very exited to read this book as the subject matter is one that is dear to my heart.

The first chapter was okay, but then the story gets convoluted and I had to keep going back to figure out who was speaking at which time.

This story just didn't, in my opinion, follow a logical flow and was difficult to follow. and although I did manage to finish it, I found it to be a chore.

WAISTED, by Randy Susan Meyers, may just be one of the most honest books – fiction or non- to ever deal with the struggle women have in loosing weight and fitting into society’s ideal of what they should “look like.”

7 overweight, obese, struggling, and emotionally drained women enroll in what sounds like a “cure” for their obesity. With promises to not only lose weight, but to get to the root of why they struggle so, these women are willing to do anything to finally overcome the bane of their existence : their weight.

The “fat camp” they turn to in the rolling hills of Vermont isn’t exactly what’s promised on the brochure. There are a lot of spoilers here that I don’t want to give away, but suffice it to say the camp is more like a prison than the weight loss nirvana it’s promised to be.

Meyers has written a satirical, emotionally in-depth, and harsh commentary on what women are forced to endure -anything and everything, including public degradation and physical damage, - in order to try and meet society’s ideal of what a woman should look like: Model thin, never caring about food, a stick figure on the arm of a male dominated world.

Meyer’s contention that obesity and overweight syndrome is fostered by decades of family indoctrination is so true, so brutally true, that I actually cried at certain passages in the book where our protagonists’ mothers came into play.

Bitingly witting, emotionally raw, and with heroines every woman who has ever struggled with her weight can relate to, WAISTED is book I am recommending to all my girl friends, their daughters, and their mothers.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an advance sneak peek at the book for an honest opinion on its merit. 5 well deserved stars.

Off to a good start, but after a while I gave up on this book. Not interesting, main character is bulimic, couldn't relate on any level.

Daphne and Alice meet at a retreat that was advertised as a way to lose a lot of weight quickly, but allegedly healthily. They agree to be followed by a camera crew because they think it’s being filmed for a serious documentary.

Daphne has a mother who has harped on her since she was young about how her weight is appalling. Even though Daphne has a husband of nineteen years who always assures her that he is attracted to her just as she is, she can’t shake her mother’s disappointment and condescension.

Alice has a white mother and a black father, both of whom have always supported her unfailingly. However, when she met her husband, a film director, she was super skinny because she was devastated by a breakup. Since then, she’s put on a lot of weight, and her husband doesn’t bother to conceal his displeasure about this.

Along with the other women at the retreat, Alice and Daphne discover the nefarious true story about what’s being done to them in the name of entertainment by humiliation and they take action.

I’m in OK shape, and there is no way I could possibly eat as little and work out as much as the women in the out-of-the-way mansion do, day after day. Women who are significantly overweight—I can’t imagine how they could manage not keeling over with serious injuries.

Something this novel gets right is talk about the way overweight people stuff food down their faces privately, but without enjoyment. Toward the end, it gets a little too after-school-special about how much we should love our bodies just as they are, but all in all, this is a fast, engaging read.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to review this novel, which RELEASES MAY 21, 2019.