Intense, sad, sexy and sweet - four basic words and yet emphasized a lot about how I felt about this book. It may be true that you can follow the story line with some predictability, what you can't follow is the emotions that may rise within you as you do. There's a lot about this book to love, and, in typical Tabatha fashion, it had a way of ripping me apart. I mean, a boy falling in love with a plus-size girl sounds simple, right? Nope - wrong. There's a series of complications in this book that have had me swearing, threatening to hit something or someone, happiness, crying and then more crying. Yeah, I cried a lot. So sue me, I'm an easy crier. All kidding aside though, as a plus-sized gal myself, I could relate to some of how Lilly felt.But not to the same extent. Lilly had a worse self-confidence issue then I did at her age. There was a sense that she didn't have any faith in her own womanhood - as if being fat somehow made her less than what she actually was. I felt sad for her, but in some ways I also wanted to shake her and yell 'pull yourself together, woman'. There can be reasons why people feel that insecure which I can understand, and because of that it can also be very hard to overcome. She was very self-abrasive. She joked about being fat, and while I can imagine some readers being annoyed with it, I saw it more as a coping mechanism.And then enters Devin. Devin, who only appears because of selfish reasons, but ends up staying for other more important ones. I loved Devin. It was fascinating to watch him change and battle himself as the story went on. This was a book where I could see a character's emotional growth from someone not to be proud of, into someone I could respect and fall in love with. It was a battle. There was so much I didn't like about him at the start. He was the very image of the boy who your mama would warn you against. But, in his defense, he did a lot of things to keep his family together. He was the one who treated Lilly as if she was an attractive woman and not just an overweight girl.This was not a straight-forward love story. There was a bit so intense in it that made me ache for Lilly, Devin, his sister Jenny and Devin's father. A near tragedy. But, that's all I'm going to say on it, because to explain further would be giving away too much information. What I also enjoyed about this story was the back story - both Lilly's and Devin's. They both had ghosts that haunted them and it was fascinating to read about, but also explained why they were the way they were.There was some scenes of violence in this book, and I'm not sure how I felt about it. If those episodes had happened in real life, chances are the person who did it would end up being arrested. I understood why it was done and I considered the reasons heroic, but also vigilante. I guess this bit is up to the eye of those who read it to decide how they feel about it.The writing was so much better than I expected it to be. I think I only saw one missing word throughout the whole book. This author has grown from strength to strength, and I have to admit that I am looking forward to the next book in the 'Chubby Girl Chronicles'.Be warned - this is not a clean romance novel. As the warning above indicated, there is swearing, violence and sex scenes in this novel. This is a 'new adult' novel and is NOT young adult. I would recommend this to anyone who is in their late teens or older, who wants a sweet, yet very sexy, romance that has a touch of violence in it.Now for my rating:-Four out of five stars.This review can be found here:-http://magicalmanuscriptsandwritingthings.blogspot.co.nz/
