"Big Girl Small" Review

Big Girl Small

by Rachel DeWoskin

5/10

My Synopsis:

Big Girl Small is a novel telling the story of Judy Lohden.  Judy is a daughter, a sister, an actress, a singer, a student, and a little person.  Dealing with everyday teenage stuff is difficult enough but when you’re half the size of everyone else, it is nearly impossible.  Judy strives to be a typical teenager but when she develops a crush on one of the popular guys at school, things take a turn for the worst.  She finds herself in a bit of a predicament - a big enough predicament to warrant running away.  She feels she has disgraced her family, her friends, and most of all herself.  Her life will never be the same again.  Have Judy’s actions made things worse?  How will she survive?  Will she ever recover?

My Opinion:

Big Girl Small was a disappointment for me.  I started the book interested in the life of a little person only to find out that that wasn’t the focus of the book.  The story focuses on Judy being a teenager more so than her being a little person which I just didn’t find as interesting.  We’ve all been teenagers.  We’ve all had a crisis or two and thought our lives were over.  Sure, Judy’s crisis is bigger than any I ever experienced but I just wasn’t seeing it as life ending.  She made bad choices and thus bad things happened.  The thing that threatens to label Judy forever could be predicted from early on in the book which was a let down.  The characters of Sarah and Molly were a bit unbelievable.  Having really good friends when you are a teenager is a blessing not the norm and I had trouble believing that these girls would stand by Judy no matter what.  There were some extraneous characters that really served little or no purpose.  There were things brought up throughout the story, like Kyle’s sister, that never really get addressed and so have no real reason to be brought up.  Everything seemed to clean up nice and tidy in the end for as major of an event as this crisis was.  It felt like maybe this was supposed to be a young adult book but with the drug references and sex - I just didn’t know.  Overall, I was kind of glad when this book was over.  Not bad but not good either. 5 out of 10