CW: depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia

This was a fantastic read. I relate a lot with the main character Mindy and some of her depression and body dysmorphia are things I’ve had to combat first hand. I really enjoyed the magical realism and the lessons this story is teaching. I hope this graphic novel reaches anyone who is struggling because this story is ultimately about self love and combatting negative ideas about yourself in a healthy way rather than through unhealthy means.

Unfortunately this story really resonated with me... Beautiful artwork, bittersweet story. Would definitely recommend for others who struggle with body dysmorphia.

Mindy has an eating disorder, but she is so used to it she can not see what is going on. She over eats, she throws up and moves on. She sees herself as fat, while those around her don't see that.

And this goes on until she takes a bite of a magic candy bar which sends her back to her childhood, when this issue started. How she tried therapy, how she thought having a boyfriend might change things, all the horrid things that happen in high school.

Nicely done story. Often eating disorders are hidden from friends.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This YA graphic novel is about Mindy, a girl living with an eating disorder and low self-esteem. Her parents, best friend, and most other people in her life don’t seem to be a help either..

One day while out shopping she buys a new chocolate bar that makes her dream about a different past event in her life every time she takes a bite. Now she can see how she views herself and how the other people around her make her view herself, and she can learn to love herself.

The illustrations in this graphic novel are bright and bold, even though the subject isn’t. It packs a punch on the topic of how people treat the ones they love, and how an eating disorder can be life altering. I enjoyed the writing style and the message!

Thanks to Net Galley, Sweeney Boo and the publisher first this ARC!

Thanks to Netgalley and to the publisher for providing me with this arc. I loved the drawings, they are really nice, This theme is kinda tricky and I wish I could have seen Mindy's mind evolution a little better, it was a little abrupt. Still, I enjoyed it and I'll give it a 3,5 stars.

Eating disorders is one of the top mental heath issues in the US. This book explores Mindy's journey. She struggles with body dysmorphia and is a bulimic. Her friend and family make comments that hurt and harm her. This story details how she deals with the challenges.

If you are struggling like Mindy is know you are enough, you are beautiful and loved. This book contains resources you can use for help as well as affirmations for you. All of those who struggle or know someone who is struggling should read this book,

I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, I don’t know what to say about this graphic novel. I liked it but at the same time I didn’t. I loved the art style and I liked that the couples pulled purple. I was intrigued by the story because I do like to learn about the mental health associated with body dysmorphia/ eating disorders. But I also felt like this poor girl was treated like shit by everyone and they are mad at her for it. Her parents always were saying she’s fat and eats too much, blah, blah. Even her best friend was doing the same. I’d be dropping that negativity fast. The only person who loved her for her was Elliot and we don’t even know if they end up together. I just feel bad for her.

<i>Eat, and Love Yourself</i> is a graphic novel about Mindy, a girl who has to live with an eating disorder, body dysmorphia and some anxiety issues. One day she stumbles upon a chocolate bar that advertises to solve all of her problems...

The book is packed with women-positive graphics, vibrant colors and lots of empathy. I love the art style - cartoonish but full of details, purple-ish tones and not-so-perfect in their appearance characters. Mindy - the main character - is the sweetest person and reading about her problems with accepting herself was tough and heartbreaking. I read it all at once and would read again with pleasure.
<i>Eat, and Love Yourself</i> shows that the world is judgemental and sometimes all we need is just some space, and that's ok!

What I loved:
• Magical realism to show real-life issues
• Art style and colors
• Body positivity
• Cat companion! 😺

<i>Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and feelings are my own</i>

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. This was an interesting story about body dysmorphia, eating disorders, how we see ourselves, and how things people can say affect us. I enjoyed the drawings and the colour schemes.

This graphic novel is about a girl named Mindy who has always struggled with her weight and body image. In the story the reader is introduced to Mindy's closest friend, her parents, and her potential love interests. Mindy struggles with body dysmorphia and bulimia, and everyone around her seems to contribute to her problems by the way they talk to her. One day, she buys a candy bar from the store that tells her to eat and love herself. Mindy then has a series of flashbacks that may help her change her outlook on life, if only she can turn off those negative voices in her head...

Just like Mindy, I have struggled with my weight and perception of myself for most of my life. I sympathized with her, was angry, and was sad to the point of tears as I read her story. The artwork was powerful and thought provoking, and I believe the art added so much essential emotion and impact to the story. While I don't endorse the life choices made by the characters or the profanity used, the biggest thing that bothered me was that Mindy's story stopped abruptly and it didn't seem like much was going to change for her. I don't think her parents or her best friend really understood what they were doing to her when they made snide comments about her weight or eating habits. At least Elliott cared for Mindy because of who she was as a person and not just because of her appearance. I recommend this book with hesitation because the author did shed some light on how awful it is to have an eating disorder and not have any positive support, but at the same time, I don't think the abrupt ending portrayed a positive outcome because some loose ends were left untied.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. A positive review was not required, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

I like that this comic shows how the people you love can say very harmful things without meaning nor realizing it, with subtle subtext. I also really like some of the scenes composition and the colors.
I would have liked the character to really be fat and not just athletic thick, like she has a very small waist.
But, like a lot of books, I think this comic doesn't go far enough or deep enough. I would have liked the story to focus more on the learning of self-love. We never really go deep in the toughts of the character so we never really get to see her learning process.

I got extremely excited when I saw this cover and read the synopsis. The comic covers an extremely important topic that is such a personal issue for so many people who have struggled with their weight, and loving and accepting themselves. So I'm pretty sad to say that the story gave me pretty mixed feelings and that ending was especially disappointing because it was so abrupt. I checked to see if this was a series but I couldn't find any information on it. I'm kind of hoping that Mindy's journey will continue but I have a feeling it won't?

First of all, this art work was fantastic. I loved the colour palette and I loved the drawing style. It has a modern edge to it but it's a little bit more "rough" than I usually like but I really enjoyed it in this graphic novel. I thought Mindy was drawn well. She's shown as having a very curvaceous body type although I don't know that I would identify her as having a "big" body. Still, I liked the way she was drawn and her style in particular was great!

Now, on to the more serious content… My weight and self-image is something I've struggled with my whole life, even now as a 31yo, so Mindy's situation was entirely relatable and really hit so close to home. This comic made me feel so much--sadness, anger, happiness and hope. I experienced so much of what Mindy went through, although I'm thankful (I guess) who've always had friends who've told me that they loved me the way I am without then going on to give me backhanded compliments about my eating habits and body. But when it comes to family, the toxic words that came out of their mouths were mirrors to what used to come out of my parents' mouths, and wow. Those were some really tough scenes to read. You can feel Mindy crawling into herself and wanting to drown her feelings in the one thing that gave her comfort: food.

Mindy experiences flashbacks after eating this chocolate bar called "Eat, and love yourself". I thought the concept was really cool--imagine discovering such a chocolate bar! The flashbacks show us when she started purging for the first time, how she stopped eating in front of others but binged in private, how she went to therapy to try to deal with her bulimia but stopped going, and how until now she has never learned to love or accept herself because of the hurtful things her family and friends would say to her. These moments were so painful to see, and my heart broke for Mindy (and in a way also for myself) but with each one I was really hoping that we would get to see more growth in her character. I know how we see ourselves doesn't change over night but for a premise that promises a journey of acceptance and self love, I have to say that we don't really experience it.

That's not to say that Mindy doesn't experience any change. She stands up for herself to her parents and it was a scene that had me screaming "HELL YES, MINDY! You tell them, girl!" It was an empowering scene that I felt in my bones! She also started to realise in later flashbacks towards the end just how much damage she was possibly doing to herself, but just as things were getting better the story just ends. I was expecting more positive changes to come, especially with the rekindled friendship/romance between Mindy and Elliott, but the story cuts off seemingly mid-positive thought and let's just say it was pretty underwhelming and unsatisfying.

Overall, I think that this story has a great message that's very important to talk about and I'm glad this graphic novel exists. That said, I think it could stand to be slightly longer so that Mindy's change and growth can be fully realised because unfortunately, I wasn't near convinced she had accepted herself with that ending. It felt too much of a "beginning" than a satisfying ending.

Tw: eating disorder

Thank you so much for the Arc from NetGalley!

Basically loving the art, the drawing, and the story. Talking about body change and how the character sees herself. How it affects her in her life and with her confidence in everything. I think this comic talk about an important subject but I also feel I needed a little more.
Anywho I feel like you should read it and understand how people can feel.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing this e-arc!

A story about Mindy, a woman living with an eating disorder who has to learn how to love herself again. Whimsically, she goes back in time recollecting memories of her as she tackles body dysmorphia. I liked the story. It was fine. But upon reflection i have decided to bum my rating up thanks to the author's subtle ways of adding diversity and tackling various problems.

Oh wow.. I did not expect this!

Now, listen to me. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who is overweight, who did and does struggle with eating disorders and who has suffered and still does sometime because of how she perceives herself and how others do.
I am not of the opinion that carrying extra weight is okay. Not from an aesthetic point of view, but from a very objective health perspective.

However

What I would love for everyone to understand: we are work in progress. And the way we relate to ourselves and to those around us affects how that progress goes.
If you find yourself in my place or Mindy's, you will never love yourself if you can't love yourself as you are in this moment. Loving someone does not mean washing all imperfections or ignoring them. It means being able to accept and embrace someone with and as they are, and lovingly helping them achieve their best self. And so you must do with yourself. You must accept who and what you are now, understand that your value is not those extra or too few kilos you have or that acne or those scars, and then, from that point on, decide on how you can bring this body to its best, healthy shape, to be able to enjoy it for many years to come and to cherish it.

If you are friends with or have family members who struggle with their bodies, pointing it out, judging their every bite and move, won't help. It will just feed their anxiety. Instead, talk lovingly to them, show them you accept them as they are, but are willing to do more and go the extra mile and be there for them if they need your help in getting better.

I loved that this book managed to portray the inside turmoil we go through. Also, it showed how food is not just food sometimes. Food becomes the only thing that offers comfort when you feel at your lowest and so it gets you in this vicious cycle of eating, feeling bad, eating for feeling bad, feeling worse. And it showed it so well.

I'm getting way too deep into the subject but I appreciated this book. Kudos to the author

**Thank you to Netgalley and Boom! Box for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This in no way changes my rating**

Eat, and Love Yourself is described as a fantasy comic about a 27-year-old named Mindy who finds a chocolate bar that will allow her to be "brought back to a specific moment of her past -- helping her look at herself honestly, learn to love her body the way it is, and [accept] love." That is not at all what I got from this comic.

As a plus-size reader who is the same age as Mindy, I should have been all over this comic. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I have tried all the fad diets. I've been told the same things Mindy is told by her family, which is essentially mixed messaging ("You're beautiful and don't know it" but also "you're never going to find a husband at your current weight"). My dad actually threatened to send me to fat camp in my late teens. I am SQUARELY in the demographic for this story.

Instead, I was deeply hurt and confused by it. I'm actually holding back tears as I write this.

**WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD**

In NO WAY was this "body positive" or about "loving yourself". Mindy doesn't learn ANYTHING in this story until she makes an arbitrary decision to "love herself" on the LAST PAGE of the story. The entire time, she binge eats. She is shown on the page to have bulimia, resulting in multiple panels of her throwing up after eating. While this disorder is an important topic to cover, I'm unsure if this was the best medium to portray that in. I'm concerned seeing Mindy throw up may "inspire" others to try and lose weight the same way, even though that is clearly not the message the story is trying to get across. She also lies about eating when she hasn't and constantly tells herself not to eat or that she's "not hungry". She gets to a point this is affecting her work. Even in a dream, she's telling herself she can't eat. She has very, very deepseated issues that need to be addressed by a psychiatrist (who is shown in the book, but whom she has since stopped seeing). A "magic chocolate bar" isn't going to fix them. She needs more help than that.

Mindy has a toxic family and "friend" who give her mixed messages consistently and constantly. "You're beautiful" and then a chapter later, "You're shoveling food in your face." "You shouldn't wear that pattern. It's not right for our body type" and then a few pages later "C'mon! Eat some more lasagna!" At the "moments in life" the chocolate bar brings her back to, she is called a "blob" by one parent and is said to be "not eating for attention" by the other, who also adds that she'll "never get a boyfriend this way". Her ONE friend tells her "you're never going to get a boyfriend eating the way you do" and polices her intake to the point that she tells her she can "smell chocolate" on her. While in reality, people say these things all of the time, thinking they're being helpful, Mindy barely does anything about it to "fix" those relationships to lead to the intended ending. She tells her friend sometimes what she says is hurtful. She tells her parents she's tired of being a disappointment to them. But the effort put into the relationship being fixed on BOTH sides isn't shown. She cuts off ties with the friend temporarily and her parents gaslight her by saying "she's beautiful inside" and they "never meant to give her the feeling they didn't think that" when they VERY HEAVILY IMPLIED exactly that MULTIPLE times in the text!

The love interest aspect was the least toxic because he "loved her regardless", but the ending is left open, so who knows what happened with him?

All of the extremely toxic messaging aside, the character model was inconsistent throughout the book. There are times Mindy is shown as thicker. There are times she looks thinner. There are times she's got very thick thighs and one inexplicable panel where she has a thigh gap. This is especially apparent from drawings of her facing sideways. Sometimes she looks bigger, especially in the stomach area, than she does in panels even a few pages over.

While the characters in the story are aesthetically pleasing and I enjoyed the artwork, I was EXTREMELY hurt and disappointed by the message in this story. I did not find ANY body positivity. Instead, I found a comic that was perpetuating the toxic messaging of friends and family of plus-size people leading to the character binging and purging and then berating herself. I would argue the "moments" intended to help Mindy "love herself" just show her how hurtful everyone in her life's behavior has been and would serve to make her more depressed. And a one page "decision" to "love herself for herself" isn't enough growth for me.

All in all, I give this a ⭐️/5, which is really disappointing. I have read many other comics by Boom! Box and have LOVED them. I was expecting more. I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone read this. I think it's incredibly harmful and hurtful.

Before I start gushing over this graphic novel, let me explain its contents. Eat, and Love Yourself follows a 27-year-old girl, named Mindy, who has been struggling with an eating disorder, depression, and body image since she was a little girl. Throughout the story, the reader views how the people closest to Mindy have contributed to her low self-esteem. It’s a really powerful story. I was having trouble reading the last few pages, as there were tears in my eyes.

Well, I guess that I already gushed a little bit, but can you blame me? Eat, and Love Yourself resonated with my own life experiences, and I know of multiple other people it would surely also resonate with. I already want to gift this book to a couple of people in my life. I honestly think anyone who has struggled with body image issues would get something out of this graphic novel.

Of course, there are a couple of trigger warnings associated with this title though. The trigger warnings include body shaming and binge eating and purging.

I hope that we get more volumes of Eat, and Love Yourself. I would love to view more of Mindy’s journey towards self-love.

Eat, and Love Yourself was provided to me as an ARC from NetGalley.

This graphic novel was sort of a mixed bag for me.

Mindy has spent her entire life dealing with disordered eating, and now, in her mid-twenties, she discovers a chocolate bar that, when she eats it, takes her back in time to pivotal moments in her life. Be reliving these memories, Mindy begins to recognize her disorder for what it is and move towards self-love.

My main issue with this was the ending -- I needed one more chapter. It ends abruptly with Mindy deciding she's going to change, but for me, that was a difficult ending to deal with. We see in Mindy's flashbacks that she's tried to change before: she's gone to therapy, she's oscillated between binging and restricting herself. For a story about recovery and learning to love oneself, we don't actually get either of those things. Recognizing an issue and saying "things will be different" is relatively easy compared to actually changing the disordered behavior.

I'm glad that Mindy calls out both her best friend and her parents by the end of the book for their constant commentary on her body. Seeing her disordered eating encouraged because "it's fine if she misses a meal, she doesn't need it" and the perpetual "you'll never find love" was hard, and I'm really glad they were both challenged by the narrative.

All in all, I'd say this graphic novel does a reasonably good job of accomplishing its goals. The art was gorgeous and the colors were so vivid and beautiful (I love the jewel tones).

A fairly quick read with a lot of heart to it. It hit home in many aspects, im not goning to lie, and there were parts that were a little confronting to me cause i'd been in simmilar situations and mindsets. The graphics and colouring are great and help make it a very enjoyable read. I could see this being a very uplifting and motivting book for many people and i wish it was around when i was younger. Sweney Boo is a talented author and brings the character of Mindy to life and makes her very realistic character wise. I will say though that ome aspects of this book could be triggering for people with an eating disorder or eating problems and id recommend taking that into account before starting this book if you think that it could potentially be an issue for you. Overall, it is a solid read and well put together book. I'm happy where it ended and happy with the character development throughout.

A moving modern day fantasy about a girl who has problematic views towards food and her own body.

Mindy is in her late twenties, works in a coffeeshop and basically hates her body. She can't stop herself eating when she's depressed (which is a lot, these days) and then bringing it back up.

It doesn't help that her best friend isn't being supportive, and it also doesn't help that she acccidentally repels the boy she's interested in because of her lack of confidence.

Then she picks up an artisan bar of chocolate, supposedly made by a small, indie producer, and finds that every piece she eats sends her back in time, to revisit instances when her body image was brought into question. This helps her confront her past, and see a possible way forward.

Look, I'm a middle-aged man, and I've had weight problems and self-confidence issues all my life. I know how important it is to teach (young and older!) people about body dysmorphia, and how it warps your sense of self and can obliterate your self image. And, even more important, what you can do against it. The book can sometimes be a bit too didactic, I feel, it lacks subtlety - but then I think: perhaps that is the best way to approach this problem.

The art is quite cartoony, it's cute and does a great job of telling the story.

It's an important subject, and this book handles it beautifully.

3.5 stars