Fat Angie by E. E. Charlton-Trujillo (review)

Everyone in their small town was shocked when Angie's sister joined the Air Force rather than taking a basketball scholarship to college. When she was captured in Iraq and a YouTube video of her torture went viral, Angie was devastated. Angie's very public attempt at suicide has garnered her no sympathy from any quarter; in fact, it makes her bully bait at school and at home, where her mother is emotionally frozen and both her mother and her brother have become toxically mean. Possible salvation comes from KC Romance, a brash, seemingly fearless new girl who is attracted to Angie, but who is confused and a little put off by Angie's fumbling responses. While Angie tries to figure out if she is "gay-girl gay," she is also trying to live up to her sister's legacy by trying out for the basketball team. Her unlikely success in that endeavor somewhat threatens the realism here, but it also injects a measure of hope in an otherwise bleak story, particularly when Angie discovers that KC has deep problems of her own that Angie can't begin to help solve. The only character who isn't achingly broken is Jake, a neighbor whose life of normalcy and social success has left him ill-equipped to help Angie, though he tries. Ultimately, though, Angie's gradual grieving process, which takes her through crushing embarrassment as well as bittersweet triumph, will move readers as it takes up multiple contemporary issues and processes them with both credibility and considerable rhetorical finesse.