Dietland

Dietland by Sarai Walker, 310 pages

Summary from Goodreads: Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse. With her job answering fan mail for a popular teen girls’ magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Only then can her true life as a thin person finally begin.

Then, when a mysterious woman starts following her, Plum finds herself falling down a rabbit hole and into an underground community of women who live life on their own terms. There Plum agrees to a series of challenges that force her to deal with her past, her doubts, and the real costs of becoming “beautiful.” At the same time, a dangerous guerrilla group called “Jennifer” begins to terrorize a world that mistreats women, and as Plum grapples with her personal struggles, she becomes entangled in a sinister plot. The consequences are explosive.

Dietland is a bold, original, and funny debut novel that takes on the beauty industry, gender inequality, and our weight loss obsession—from the inside out, and with fists flying. 

I appreciated Plum's voyage of self-discovery and transformation but I was actually drawn more to storyline of the guerrilla group that runs parallel to Plum's storyline. However, I was unsatisfied with the ending to that storyline. While the women Plum is with reject the tactics of the guerrilla group there is no discussion of why they do. The author was inspired by the movie Fight Club and you can see how it influenced the book. I would recommend this book to those that like fiction.