BlogHer Book Club Review: Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee

Stephanie McAfee's Diary of a Mad Fat Girl was originally released as a self-published e-book. Just a few months after she put it out there, it debuted at #31 on the New York Times bestseller list. She stayed there for 12 weeks, got an agent, and got published.

It's an impressive story.

I just wish I liked the book as much as I liked the story of McAfee's road to publishing success.

First, I just felt like the book was overwhelmed with pop culture references. If the book was about pop culture that would be one thing, but they just felt like they were put in for no real purpose. They didn't add to the story, they didn't flesh out the characters. If I picked up this book five years from now, I just think these would make it feel dated and irrelevant.

As for the characters, I felt more like they were caricatures than characters. They felt like they could become something interesting, but there just didn't seem to be any depth to any of them. Lots of things happened, but I didn't feel like any of the events had any kind of impact on the characters. They didn't grow, they didn't change, they didn't evolve. They felt almost like they were in a sit-com where everything would reset at the beginning of the next day.

I also get that this is light reading, but she also wrote about really difficult situations. And it's hard to write about something like domestic abuse as a beach read. The tension just felt off to me the whole time.

I think that Stephanie McAfee has a promising career ahead of her. She has all of the makings of a good book here and obviously a lot of people enjoyed it. But personally, I'd give this Diary of a Mad Fat Girl a pass.

For more discussion about this book, stop by the BlogHer page for Diary of a Mad Fat Girl.

Disclosure: I received a copy of Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee for the purpose of review and was compensated for my review, however, my opinions are 100% my own.