Size 12 is Not Fat by Meg Cabot: D

From the back cover:
Heather wells rocks!

Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two—and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings. Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather’s perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York’s top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather’s residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls… and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective!

But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who’s sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong…

Review:
Um, blurb writers? Portly means fat.

I’ve read a lot by Meg Cabot, so I wasn’t expecting greatness, but this book is downright bad. Heather is incredibly annoying and distressingly immature for a 28-year-old. She’s planning to enter college and is considering a pre-med major. Why? Does she have a genuine interest in medicine? Does she feel it’s her calling to help people? Nope. It’s just because she thinks the guy she fancies prefers professional women. And she makes comments like (paraphrased) “What 18-year-old girl wouldn’t be so flattered by a cute older dude’s attentions that she’d be willing to boff him on very little acquaintance?”

Let’s pause here so you can envision the steam pouring from my ears.

Her “investigation” is pretty excruciating. Much of it is based on assumptions, like “girls who like Ziggy would not elevator surf” and some of the conclusions reached are unsupported or nonsensical. All too frequently, the mystery (such as it is—I guessed the culprit very early on) takes a backseat to Heather’s unwelcome and uninteresting romantic shenanigans. She can’t even manage to search a dead girl’s room properly without being distracted by a dude’s butt.

I could go on, but I really just want to put this whole thing behind me. As my husband punningly put it, “This book was read, and then it blew.” I urge all to steer clear of this one.

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