Confession: I recently read a romance novel. I mean, that’s all it was — I’ve read tons of books that had a romance subplot, but this was just flat out romance novel. I blame Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. We’re going to come back to that post in a minute.

I picked up A Whole Lot of Love by Justine Davis because it featured a plus-sized leading woman — and Sarah there of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books made it sound like the author’s treatment of the female lead’s (Layla’s) weight was classy. Plus: it’s $4. Whatever; I’ll take a risk for $4.

It was a classy book. A Whole Lot of Love is a relatively short book at 192 pages and a quick read, but it’s engaging. I think I read it over the course of a couple days before bed and in the bath, and it was fun. At no point does the male lead (Ethan) ever treat her as less than sexy — once he mentally takes her out of the friend zone, which I thought was a nice touch.

It had flaws. I thought the best friends on both sides were a bit… not flat, necessarily, but a bit heavy (ahaha) on the stereotypes of best friends. I don’t know that I liked having to be reminded several times that Layla was extremely fit and healthy, as if we as readers have to know that to excuse her size. But maybe we do — I’m sure there are readers out there who have no interest in a fat lead character.

Suddenly, I want more fat heroines. I want a genre full of Layla’s — healthy, heavy women who rock on without needing to wallow in their weight, while still being somewhat fragile about how they’ve been treated by the world at large. (Oh god, I’m not doing this on purpose…)

This leads up to a couple days ago, when Amazon’s 99 cent e-book was Slim to None by Jenny Gardiner. I sort of raised an eyebrow at the title, but it’s not like A Whole Lot of Love was much better. The premise sounded kind of funny and light — the female lead (Abbie) reviews restaurants for a newspaper, but gets fired when her weight gain has made her too recognizable to do her job well. She loves food. I love food. So I decided to read a sample to see what the writing is like.

Welcome to everything I do not want in a fat heroine. The writing was fun, sort of light and snappy and kept me reading through a bit of uneasiness as Abbie opens the book discussing her weight gain and relationship with Spanx. There’s a subtle jab to her weight here and there — and we’re told she’s at least a size 22, so now I have a frame of reference: myself. With that, I get to this gem of a line that sets my teeth on edge:

Oh, jeeze, the thought of me getting pregnant at this weight is one I simply can’t contemplate.

At this point I’m leery. Hold on, Ashley, I tell myself; maybe she’s going to come to her senses and realize her life does not revolve around how she used to look. I’m still enjoying the writing style — I’m just not looking so favorably at the storyteller.

It just starts to get worse. Abbie “plods” up the steps to her home, and is promptly winded. Okay, sure — I know how that goes. I’m finally disgusted enough to close the sample here:

My Harvey Nichols pumps – optimistically purchased when I could lay claim to that size-ten physique — click with groaning desperation across my polished hardwoods.

Then she relaxes on her couch, which “gasps like a dying man beneath my girth.”

That is how you alienate a fat reader, ladies and gentlemen. I closed the sample and grumped around Twitter for 2 minutes about how I swear chick-lit writers have never met a person over size 20. For all I know, Abbie comes to peace with her size and stops throwing out self-loathing insults about her weight. But who the hell knows — I certainly never will, not with the sample full of that kind of nonsense.

Back to the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books link, I re-read it and realized exactly why I hated Abbie and loved Layla. I had an approximate size for Abbie, and it was mine. I range in the size 22 to 24, so I had a mental visual for the body she was being so nasty about. Also: Slim to None was a first-person narrative, and A Whole Lot of Love was third-person… omniscient.^?

I can even almost forgive the self-loathing — believe me, I have enough self-loathing for two fat female leads, so I don’t necessarily hate the character for having it. I can even sympathize with Abbie, who presumably was a svelte adult woman at one point and now must come to peace with her expanded size. But the narrative from Abbie’s point-of-view felt like Jenny Gardiner was saying, “I think this size 22 woman is a bit grotesque,” whereas I felt mostly removed from Justine Davis’ views on fat women.

That may not even be an accurate depiction of either author’s feelings — maybe Gardiner loves her some fat women, and Davis would send them all to fat camp is she could. In truth, I imagine they’re both probably pretty live-and-let-live about it — they both wrote fat lead women, after all.

So, in recap: I think fat heroines can be done right, but I get the feeling a lot of them are being done so, so wrong. Thoughts, readers at large? Any fat lead characters (male or female) that you loved or hated?

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? I admit I lose track of the different narrative types. Truly, I fail when I have to discuss the language.