I am so behind on posting book reviews. I’m even behind on updating storygraph, Some book blogger I am. Before I get caught up I want to talk about Kelsie Stelting’s Curvy Girls Club books. I’ve only read the first 5 and The Curvy Girls Club All Grown Up. I’ve not moved on from the OG group. At least not yet.

Adds for these books kept popping up on my Instagram feed so I decided to check out the first book, Curvy Girls Can’t Date Quarterbacks. I mostly wanted to know why adverts were all over the place on social media for these books and no one was talking about them. Curiosity got the better of me and I ended up reading 6 books in a weekend.

I would like to say that YA romance is not something I normally read, but it is a guilty pleasure of mine and usually gets me out of reading slumps. It’s what I call brain candy. There is isn’t much in the books that demands analysis and therefore the perfect “escape reads.” They are something that my scholar wired brain can just read to read.

What I really like about these books is they are real. I mean, I know curvy girls is a romance troupe and romance troupes really get to me. Having said that Stelting used other troupes as well:

• Curvy Girls Can’t Date Quarterbacks: sports romance
• Curvy Girls Can’t Date Billionaires: billionaire romance
• Curvy Girls Can’t Date Cowboys: cowboy romance
• Curvy Girls Can’t Date Bad Boys: good girl/bad boy
• Curvy Girls Can’t Date Best Friends: friends to lovers/fake dating

Really, the titles tell you what you get as far as the romance storyline goes. It’s all a little cliché, but in the world of romance cliché is kind of what sells. But, as I was saying, these books are real. The dynamics of the friendship between the five girls isn’t always perfect and they have misunderstandings. The relationship each of these girls has with their family is complicated.

Let’s go through these one by one.

Curvy Girls Can’t Date Quarterbacks – Rory’s mom is health nut always putting Rory on diets to loose weight and none of them are working. In fact, it seriously comes across as her mom is fat shaming her. Rory is diagnosed at 17 with PCOS. I have a friend with PCOS and I thought of her as I read this book. I can not imagine being told at 17, before you are even thinking of these things, that you will probably never have children. The subplot is her dealing with her mother, her peers fat shaming her (especially mean girl Merritt)  and coming to terms with her health problem.

Curvy Girls Can’t Date Billionaires – Jordan is the daughter of an immigrant. Her father is no longer in the picture and her mom is working hard to make a life for them by starting her own cleaning business. I feel like this is a stereotype but it’s also something that happens regularly. Growing up I had a friend whose mother was from Germany. She married a soldier but didn’t get her U.S. citizenship until after her parents died. At the time it made it easier for her travel to Germany to see her family. She cleaned houses and was paid under the table. Back to Jordan. She gets up at 5am to help her mother clean before school. She falls for the son of her mother’s billionaire clients. Jordan and her mother had a remarkable relationship that almost didn’t survive the relationship between Jordan and Kai.

Curvy Girls Can’t Date Cowboys – In this one we meet the over-protective helicopter parents. Especially Callie’s mother. Callie has asthma and when she was younger got sick and almost died. Her mother went total granola cruncher. Everything had to be organic, antibiotic free, no GMOs, no chemical cleaners, the whole 9 yards. In the 6th book about the friend group, Curvy Girls All Grown Up, at 25 and married, her mother is still calling her to make sure she’s taking her meds, and even comes into her house and throws out everything she believes is bad and replaces it with organic stuff. I mean, when vinegar will kill mold just as good as any chemical cleaner, we use it, but we also know we need antibacterial soap to clean up after cutting up chicken. Callie’s mom refused to see these kinds of compromises. Ray’s dad died when he was younger and he took over the family ranch, the sort of thing that Callie’s mom is totally against even though we’re talking free range animals who are well cared for. Problems ensue.

Curvy Girls Can’t Date Bad Boys – Zara’s father is from India and still believes in arranged marriages and is setting Zara up with every business connection he can think of. Doesn’t matter that she’s 17 and some of these guys are 30 years old! Finally he sets her up with an up and coming actor who is doing a movie for his studio. He’s 21 and the brother of mean girl Merritt. Ryde is the last person she wants to be with, and even makes the comment (a bit of foreshadowing here) that he’s in love with his best friend, Ambrose, just based on their extreme bromance. Zara escapes a party at a club with Ryde and his friends and hops on the back of a motorcycle of a guy she doesn’t even know. Ronan dropped out of school and is estranged from his abuse step-father and mother who failed to protect him. Needless to say Zara’s father isn’t happy, Ryde’s family isn’t happy and there is fallout.

Curvy Girls Can’t Date Best Friends – Through all the previous books all their friends comment on how Callie and Carson are in love and just don’t know it. They maintain that they are just best friends. This book is the only one that is told from the POV of both main characters. Turns out these two have been hiding their feelings for each since they were 10 years old. They finally get their crap together after Callie convinces Carson to fake date her to make a guy she thinks she’s interested in believe she’s dating material. Callie’s family is the closest to perfect, but Carson’s family is Jerry Spring Show dysfunctional. Reminds me a bit of my own family growing up.

This is the kind of realness I am talking about. Real families with real problems. Girls that have more going on than just their weight but how they see themselves is obviously reflected in how everyone else has seen them and treated them because of their weight. While the troupes and clichés and stereotypes are present, the books don’t rely on them like I have seen so many other books do. There is this wide representation of different people from different walks of life, some with health problems, some with problematic families.  It’s also nice to read a romance where everyone isn’t perfect.

I seriously recommend these books for anyone into YA romance and anyone that wants to see representation that isn’t forced.