This review is incredibly difficult for me to write. I am a book reviewer. But, I don't review books to be critical. I do it to promote books, support authors and publishers, and share my love of reading. I review over 200 books per year and I virtually never give an overtly negative review. I often find that even if a book is not my personal taste, I can appreciate it for what it is and what it brings to the table.

Unfortunately, Waisted completely missed the mark for me. And while I appreciate the concept, I struggle to give it even a halfway decent review.

Let's start with the things I liked:
1. The overall message. I personally struggle with weight and body image issues so I loved the idea behind this book. I love the ultimate message of loving one's self for more than just a number on a scale. I get it.
2. The weight loss tips and quotes interspersed throughout the prose. Although sometimes awkwardly placed and located, I liked what they added.

Ok, so what didn't I like?
1. In a general sense, I felt like the writing was completely ineffective in delivering the overall message. At a high level, the point was made. But, the story never felt authentic or realistic enough for me to feel invested in the story or the characters. I would have appreciated a more conversational tone to the sentence structure. It just felt like the author was trying too hard.
Frankly, I didn't care what happened next because I was so disengaged.
2. The first half of the story felt really schizophrenic and unorganized. I explained it to a friend as "just words on a page" because there were a lot of words and very little substance. The second half turned around a bit and the story started to move in a cohesive direction, but it still felt choppy and inconsistent.
3. The dialogue was totally unrealistic. I could never see myself saying some of the things the characters in this story did. I so much more appreciate when authors write dialogue that is relatable.
4. The characters were not well developed or distinct. I'm not joking here... for about 70% of the book I kept getting confused with which character was Daphne and which was Alice (the two main characters). Their literary voices were so similar and poorly differentiated that they felt like the same character in two different story lines.
5. While I appreciate how race plays into body image, I felt like the author was too ambitious trying to tackle both issues of weight and issues of race. If she would have focused her message solely on weight, I think she may have been more successful. There were too many conflicting ideas competing for priority.

Frankly, when I finished the book I thought to myself, "I'm glad that's over." Which is never the way you want to feel when you close the last page.

Like I said, I so rarely find that I rate a book less than 3 stars. I hate so much to give a bad review but I think it's important to be authentic and honest. This one just did not resonate with me.

-I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Randy Susan Meyers, and Atria Books for the opportunity to review.-

Waisted gave me much "food for thought".. This is a wonderful novel, exploring women's relationship with their weight, overeating, self image, battling with guilt and shame, and most of all their tremendous desire to be thin. This honest book was fun and upsetting all at once. Excellent characters putting in great efforts to change their ways and explore/manage the source of their weight gain. I received an Advance Review Copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I connected with this book just from the title.
This book follows two different women and their individual struggle for thinness and self love.
This book made me realize I am not in this alone.
I have struggled with my weight my entire life and have been on WW for half of it.
I often wonder what it would feel like to be at goal but I don't do what I am supposed to
to get there.
All women should read this book.

Alice and Daphne meet at a weight loss retreat that they think is being filmed as a documentary. They later find out that they have been “misled”. This is a story of acceptance.
The book was an average read for me. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it either.
Many thanks to Atria Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This novel profiles two women who are complete strangers, Daphne and Alice. Both women seem to have it all –nice homes, successful husbands, loving families, and respectable careers, but they still are not happy. The common denominator for these two women is their obsession and dissatisfaction with their body weight. When an enticing brochure offers a lucrative month-long weight loss experience called Waisted at a resort environment in Vermont, both women feel compelled to drop everything and give it a whirl. It is at this resort that Daphne, Alice and five other generously proportioned women will meet and where their lives will change forever. Will the Waisted experience bring balance to their lives as the brochure promises, or will it be less idyllic than the women expect? This novel focuses on how families and society treat women of size, and the lengths that women will push themselves for an acceptable reading on the scale. Randy Susan Meyers accurately portrays the obsessive narrative of self-loathing that can consume an overweight woman while also making a statement about the societal values and pressures that all women face in order to be accepted. Women of all sizes and proportions will likely relate in some fashion to the struggles that these women face and will be empowered by the pervasive messages related to body image, strength and acceptance.

*** I received an advanced e-copy from Net Galley in exchange for my honest review

The premise of the novel is this small group of women going to a weight-loss retreat as part of a documentary, only to discover that it was an extreme weight-loss boot camp designed to humiliate the women and see how far they would go in order to lose weight. As someone who has struggled with their weight almost their entire life, I could relate to the women and their struggles. It begged the question: how far would I go to lose weight and be thin again? The methods used by the ones making the documentary repulsed me, my heart broke for the women at times and I mentally cheered them on at other times. The book went a little slow at times, but was overall a very empowering story for women everywhere.

As a thin daughter of a morbidly obese mother I thought I would relate to themes in this book but am disappointed to say there was nothing in this novel for me. Fortunately I did not see my mom or myself in the pathetic characters. The abuse of the fat farm is hard to believe while the desire to not be obese is easy to grasp. That the women want to lose weight for beauty with little regard for health is also hard to grasp in 2019. In reality two of my friends who had weight loss surgery did it to prolong their lives yet this aspect was not a motivator for these women. Having characters that were unlikeable made this a challenging read. I have been a fan of this author for awhile and while her writing is respectful the story is one of abuse and hatred.

I loved the synopsis of this book but I just could never really get pulled into it. It took me awhile to get into it and once I did I kept putting it down, which isn't like me at all. I felt like there was one strong character story and then it just kinda was dropped.

“Waisted” is the latest novel by Randy Susan Meyers. I have been a fan of the author since I first read “The Comfort of Lies” several years ago, and fans who appreciate Meyer’s perspective on the human condition will certainly not disappointed with her recent effort.

Daphne and Alice, like many women, wish they were thinner. Daphne’s mother has pressured Daphne to lose weight since she was young. Though her husband claims he is attracted to her because of who she is, even as an adult, Daphne still wants to make her mother happy. Meanwhile, Alice met her husband, Clancy, when she was sliver thin and feels as if she cannot return to the woman he fell in love with, she’ll lose him for good.

While attending what Daphne and Alice believe to be a weight loss retreat, they agree to be followed by a camera crew for what they believe to be a serious documentary. Instead, the purpose of the documentary is to focus on how far women would be willing to go to (including being humiliated, starved, and forced to exercise for hours at a time) lose weight. Daphne, Alice, and their roommate, Hania, struggle to maintain sanity while figuring out a way to escape.

This is not a novel about women trying to lose weight and then discovering that what matters is more than skin deep or other similar clichés. Instead, this novel is about a group of friends who seek revenge for documentary makers’ heinous actions while learning to adapt to their thinner bodies. Some of the scenes of what the women had to go through at the clinic are shocking, but what makes the novel sing is the friendship between Alice, Daphne, and Hania. Meyers also did an excellent job in developing the secondary characters of Alice and Daphne’s husbands, parents, and children. Meyers brings a fresh perspective to the weight loss issue by creating memorable characters and moving the plot along at an engaging pace.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the author and Atria Books for the opportunity to review this novel, which will be released on May 21, 2019.

You can probably count the women that don’t worry about their weight on one hand. As someone who has been overweight and managed to lose it, but constantly thinks about it, the premise of this book drew me in. Seven women, seriously overweight, sign up for a weight loss farm where their efforts will be documented on film. But is it a serious documentary or reality tv? Or something else?

The book is told from the perspective of two of the seven women . Alice, who married her director husband during the one period in her life when she was thin, only to find out how important looks are to him when she gained weight. Daphne is a gifted makeup artist with a loving husband but the mother from Hell.

As soon as the women arrive at the weight loss farm, we know this is not going to go well. A cross between army basic training and prison. There are threats, taunts and punishments. It only takes the reader seconds to realize that the methods are actually dangerous. It’s like someone took The Biggest Loser and mixed it with Cool Hand Luke.

There are a few interesting points, as the women put up with the humiliation and pain because they hate being fat so much. “What led them to obey these people? Each day, Alice became more frightened by the crap she took in her pursuit of this overwhelming desire to be thin.”

My problem with this book is I loved the premise and was disappointed with the way it plays out. It started much stronger than it finished. One major plot line seemed to be started and then dropped. I liked that each woman came to her self realizations in her own way but some of the thoughts came across as cheesy, simplistic and more worthy of a magazine article than an in depth discovery.

My thanks to netgalley and Atria Books for an advance copy of this book.

A really interesting premise, although I felt that some of the characters were rather one-dimensional and some of the dialogue/plot development felt strained.

When I read the description of this novel, I thought...kewl..this sounds interesting and I thought it might have some comedy associated with it as in other weight loss novels I have read. Boy was I wrong! Instead of your usual weight loss retreat, the 7 women who go are given the promise of weight loss in the serene mountains of Vermont. What they get is something completely different. As a plus size woman, I was initially appalled at some of the tactics used at the retreat and the women's reactions to them. I wanted to stop reading but I pushed myself to finish and what I found was 7 women whose lives were changed by their experience.

While I thought the plot was unique and interesting, it dried up a bit after the women escaped from the mansion. The book seemed very intent on sharing a point-of-view on women and weight, rather than telling the story, which I found kind of annoying - with a good story, the POV would have come out more naturally and been easier to swallow. Overall, I thought it was a good concept, but not executed in a way that made it easy to keep reading.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The plot of this book very much resembles The Biggest Loser; several women, who could stand to lose a few...well, more than a few, pounds, meet at a mansion to try to do just that. The catch is that the whole entire experience would be recorded and be turned into a documentary.

Little did they know, they weren't only trying to lose weight, but they are actually part of an experiment. They find out and decided to take matters into their own hands and bring the filmmakers down.

I had a hard time staying interested in this book. It wasn't necessarily "bad", I just didn't find it interesting.

Maybe it was me? Reality show meets reality -- weight loss, body image, and women's lives are woven into a promising yet surprisingly flat story about what happens when a group of strangers attempts a "Biggest Loser" transformation. I didn't finish reading the story; I knew what was going to happen before it did and found it impossible to connect with stock characters. For the right reader, this story will resonate, inform, and rouse. For me, it did not.

I was really looking forward to reading this, the subject/plot really intrigued me. I thought it did well with explaining how each character felt about themselves, but it just kind of dragged in the middle and I kept hoping it would hurry up and end. Took me 10 days to read it because it wasn't one I really wanted to get back to.

Received via NetGalley for review.

I wanted to like this - I was expecting a sharp satire like Libba Bray's Beauty Queens, but instead got this self-serious novel that wasn't sure if it wanted to be a parody or not, about race or weight or society or not.

In broad strokes, the characters are well-developed, and Meyers does a great job really putting you in Alice and Daphne's heads and seeing the loathing and self-destructive behaviors they put themselves through daily. Immediately, I felt for these women and how unhappy they were. Though they were surrounded by loving husbands and family (more on this a little later...), they couldn't move past how trapped they felt, and needed extreme measures to break out.

What they went through in the Waisted mansion was truly horrible and abusive, no question, and nobody deserves that, even if they "signed up for it." But Meyers brings up a huge issue and then leaves it unresolved, teasing the reader. Alice and Daphne went through this so they could get thin; they got thin. They learned self-control and appreciation. Does that mean it worked, even though the methods were terrible?

If Meyers had really wanted to discuss society and weight and women's self-worth, she would not have left such an important question (however unintentional) examined. She even has a reporter ask the women this question, only for them to brush it off! While some of the women gained the weight back (interestingly enough, special mention is made of the two women who still live with their parents gaining back even more than they had lost), Alice and Daphne remain "thin," but in a way that still leaves them unhappy. They use the extreme self-control they learned in the "fat mansion" to constantly watch what they eat, and both women use their new sense of self to push back against their mothers and the agenda they've been pushing.

With all this, my issues with the novel can be broken down into two main categories: 1) Meyers spends too much time thinking about race issues and multiculturalism. This is as big an issue as weight and women's self-image, and trying to combine the two results in an unnecessarily novel that slows down every few pages to discuss something serious. While I am mixed-race, I am not black, and neither is Meyers. It felt intensely strange to read a white women talking about Alice's beautiful skin and eyes and ability to pass for anything she wanted, while having absolutely no experience with anything she describes.

I understand wanting to increase and promote diversity in novels, so that they reflect the real world, but there is absolutely no reason for Alice to have a Jewish mother, and Southern Catholic grandparents, AND be married to a non-american, AND have a lesbian sister who, of course, is married to a black woman. AND for Daphne to be similarly multi-cultural AND for the "fat mansion" to make sure at least one women of very race is represented (AND for Alice to take specific notice of it!)... it all feels too much, and like Meyers tried too hard.

And 2) I had no idea how fat any of these women actually were. Maybe this was an intentional choice - many women feel as though they are fatter than they are, and no amount of love can convince them otherwise. But if you're going to write a novel about weight loss, specifically, you cannot ignore actual data. Alice's mother has no problem at all with her weight, giving me the impression that, while she's fat, she's probably not obese. But is she smaller than Daphne (besides the fact that she's taller)? And Daphne doesn't see herself as obese, and clearly neither does her husband, but she's very short, and one of her final weights mentioned (139) still seems like a lot. And how does Hania compare to them? Despite her amazing beauty, which Meyers never fails to mention, how tall is she? She apparently looks amazing after the "fat mansion," but she was never as fat as Alice and Daphne to begin with. And then she gains it all back! I'm sure all these women are lovely, but I couldn't picture them consistently, and this hurt my immersion.

I understand what Meyers was going for, and if she had trimmed down a lot of the "big issues" and discussions that they women had amongst themselves (and maybe some of the characters... there are a lot of people to keep track of!), she might have almost had it.

Waisted was an intriguing book that I devoured once I stared reading.

Alice and Daphane are very much different people but have one big thing in common. They are both overweight. Alice has a husband who isn't supportive and makes her feel less than because of her body, and Daphane's husband is the exact opposite. He loves her for who she is no matter what. Alice's mom is wonderful and supportive, Daphane's is always making her feel bad for her extra weight and pressuring her to lose the weight. Both of them are sick of it and decide they need a change. They sign up for Waisted, a documentary/weight loss program but it's not what they bargained for at all.

The beginning and end of the story were the parts I found the most interesting. I didn't like reading about the time they were filming Waisted. Aside from the bond Alice and Daphane shared while there, I didn't care for it at all. I felt it was over the top and brought out some not great emotions for me. I did, however, appreciate that they came out of it different people. The change took time, but it was there. This is very much a story of growth. Both for Daphane and Alice. And it was very well written.

There were things I loved about this story, things I didn't love so much, but in the end, I really did enjoy the story and these two strong and brave women's journey. I think anyone who has ever struggled with their weight can relate to this in some way, shape, or form. For anyone looking for a women's fiction story that follows two women on the path of acceptance, this is one I would recommend.

“Would the hunger to be thin overtake the desire for dignity?”

Take the Biggest Loser, introduce an added humiliation factor, and make it a social experiment where the people behind the scenes are playing a sick Milgram-like game, testing women to their limits to see what they’re willing to do and believe in order to reach an idealized body image. What will they do when they discover the ploy?

If you’ve ever struggled with weight and self esteem or know someone who has (which I’m assuming applies to everyone) this is a fantastic little peak inside the mind of a woman whose self image is bogged down by the way she looks in the mirror.

I really appreciated the nuance to the two main characters’ families. I too have experienced not being white enough to fit in with one group and not being brown enough for another, and a mother who picks apart your appearance any time she sees me. I have a real Chinese tiger mom and all of us know, if you walk in a room and have a new pimple or gained a couple pounds, it’ll be brought up in conversation. The author did a great job depicting the dynamics of that.

This was a quick, fun read. I was initially drawn to this book because of the weight loss angle it tapped into. I didn't know where it was going to go but I couldn't wait to find out! Overall, I enjoyed the story and didn't take it too seriously. I don't know that I bought the whole "not buying into this bs" attitude from one of the ladies but I went with it. The ladies' little "mission" was pretty entertaining, I must admit. Would I read this again? No. But I also don't regret reading it.