{"id":8478,"date":"2013-10-18T06:00:45","date_gmt":"2013-10-18T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=8478"},"modified":"2013-10-18T06:00:45","modified_gmt":"2013-10-18T11:00:45","slug":"girl-fire-thorns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=8478","title":{"rendered":"The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Book Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I read The Girl of Fire and Thorns<\/em> by Rae Carson and thought the story-telling was brilliant. I loved the book. The pages turned rapidly and I\u2019ve already picked up the second book in the series to read. I want to reiterate. I loved the book. I hate myself a little bit for that and this is why.<\/p>\n

From the first few pages, I could tell that something about Elisa, the main character, wasn\u2019t quite what I was used to reading. She was a princess. She had a destiny. Both of these things are commonplace in YA literature. That wasn\u2019t it. Things started clicking into place as she describes herself as looking like a \u201csausage roll\u201d in the corset required for her wedding dress. When the seams rip on the dress I wondered if the author has ever worn a corset before or seen anyone wearing one. A \u201csausage roll\u201d is not the way I would describe the effect of a corset.<\/p>\n

Still, it established that Elisa wasn\u2019t stick thin.<\/p>\n

This actually excited me. An overweight protagonist in YA lit. This book was going to show teenagers that bodies come in all shapes and sizes. This book was going to show girls that being overweight doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t do something with your life. This book was going to prove that you don\u2019t have to be skinny to be a heroine.<\/p>\n

As you can tell, a couple of chapters into the book, I was expecting a story where Elisa came to terms with her body and still accomplished her destiny.<\/p>\n

I was wrong.<\/p>\n

By the end of the book she is skinny. She doesn\u2019t even begin to go about accomplishing her destiny until she\u2019s lost weight.<\/p>\n

What sort of lesson is this teaching girls?<\/p>\n

The exact same lesson that has been ingrained into us year after year by media. Only skinny people can accomplish great things. Don\u2019t even try if you\u2019re fat.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t tell if the author was intentionally trying to fat-shame or if it was an accidental by-product of telling the story. Maybe I\u2019m reading too much into it.<\/p>\n

All I know is that I loved the book. But the inherent message didn\u2019t sit well with me and that with every minute that passed after I closed the cover, I felt guiltier.<\/p>\n

On that note, I\u2019m off to read book two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I read The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson and thought the story-telling was brilliant. I loved the book. The pages turned rapidly and I\u2019ve already picked up the second book in the series to read. I want to reiterate. I loved the book. I hate myself a little bit for that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[899,937,1139],"class_list":["post-8478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-rae-carson","tag-review","tag-the-girl-of-fire-and-thorns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}