Fat Girl (Romance in Rehoboth, #1) by K.L. Montgomery – Review by Denise Owens

Fat Girl by K.L. Montgomery
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fat Girl is the first book in the Romance in Rehoboth series by K.L. Montgomery. It is a contemporary romance novel. The story is about a 39 year old woman named Claire, and she writes a blog on the internet. Claire recently separated from her soon to be ex-husband, Jeremy. Claire has a teenaged son, who is in high school and his name is Elliott. Elliott lives in Lewes, Delaware with his mom, in his grandparents home, while Claire saves money to buy a house for the two of them in the Rehoboth Beach area. Elliott visits his father, who still lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the home that Elliott grew up in, one or two weekends a month. Claire found out that her husband was cheating on her when she found a phone in Jeremy’s gym bag, while she was looking for his dirty clothes to put into the wash. When Claire confronted Jeremy about the fact that he was cheating on her, he didn’t even try to deny it. Jeremy was cheating with a young woman who belonged to the same gym that Jeremy and Claire belonged to, and she was much younger than him. Claire had wanted to try to save their marriage, but Jeremy told her that he would plan to still see his mistress, so Claire thought it best to end their marriage, since he clearly didn’t love her any more, since he wanted to keep seeing this woman. Claire felt that maybe Jeremy wouldn’t have started the affair if she wasn’t fat. Claire was now seeing a therapist several times a week, Dr. Dawn, whose office was close to her parents’ home in Lewes, to help her to learn to deal with the end of her marriage and with other problems.

Claire had been fat since she was at least nine years old, and she had been teased and bullied a lot in her childhood because of it. Even her mother, who was tall and thin, like Claire’s younger sister, Emma, gave her a hard time about her weight. These things caused Claire to start an unhealthy habit to lose weight starting when she was a teenager. Claire would hardly eat anything and then exercise like crazy. Sometimes she felt really weak and light-headed because of it, but she would try to ignore that, and carry on with her plan to lose weight. Even though her plan for losing weight was obviously unhealthy, Claire’s mom had to have noticed since Claire was not eating many meals when she was home, but her mother said nothing to Claire about her unhealthy eating and exercising routine. Now that she is living back in Lewe’s, Claire’s best friend, Jean-Marc Tasse, has helped her a lot, too. She could always go to his house to vent or laugh at whatever was bothering her, and he was the first person that she told about the offer that she has gotten to write a column for a famous newspaper in New York.

Claire felt that she was ready to date again, but because she was a writer and she could stay at home
to work, she didn’t have the opportunity to meet men. Jean-Marc told her about a dating site, that he uses, and Claire decided to try it out. The first man that she meets from the site is a man named Jack. Jack teaches music at a private school called the Delmarva Academy, he’s 35 years old, divorced, and he has a 3 year old daughter who lives in Texas with her mother. Claire sees Jack about once a week because they feel comfortable getting to know each other and they become friends, but Claire is starting to feel attracted romantically towards him, too. She feels that Jack probably isn’t attracted to her physically because of her weight. Will Claire get the chance to become romantically involved with Jack? Will she begin to deal with her body image issues?

I really enjoyed this book by K.L. Montgomery. I’ve had body image issues my whole life, and was bullied about my weight a lot by my sister, neighborhood kids, and adults. I even dieted in an unhealthy manner during my senior year of high school, losing almost 40 pounds in 3 months. I enjoyed how the author dealt with Claire’s weight issues since I can definitely relate. I believe that this is a wonderful romance novel that everyone would love, and even though it is the first book in the series, it is definitely a stand-alone novel.

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