Really cute story that is an obvious homage to Carrie Bradshaw. It’s like if Carrie Bradshaw was a recently divorced millennial size 14. She has a blog where she names her potential boyfriends as nicknames. She has her own boutique PR firm. She has 3 equally fashionable and girly friends that she often lunches with in Manhattan.
After dating Zach seven years, they get married and divorce after only 3 months.
She joins a recent divorced ladies group and they decide to go to the Bahamas to celebrate. Although she has always been a size 12, now she can’t even fit into a size 14. On manhattan this counts as plus sized. She takes the experience of bathing suit shopping as inspiration and starts a bathing suit company.
I really thought that the body acceptance vs body positivity language really landed. It is way more accessible to accept and be neutral about your body rather than to celebrate it. I have been a size 18W and a size 2, I can definitely relate to all of her body image issues. I’ve lost and gained over 1000 pounds in my lifetime, so I can tell you that although dieting is unhealthy and doesn’t work long term, I will never stop dieting because the world just treats you so much better when you are in a smaller body.
The sexual freedom in the book isn’t for me, not necessarily my generation, but I also appreciate the sex positive message, particularly within the framework of high fashion, high socioeconomic status body image culture.
Sunny has a judgmental mom, an infuriating ex, and fun friends. It’s not all that relatable to a common woman in middle America and it’s a bit hard not to be jealous of Sunny who is very successful and privileged in a lot of ways. And it can be hard to listen to someone whine about their successful, glamorous life.
That said, I really enjoyed this and it is great on audio as well. Well acted and good New York accents and parent and man accents.
Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the ARC. Book to be published June 24, 2025.
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