Onto the review.
Mammoth by Jill BaguchinskyPublished: November 16th, 2018 by Turner Publishing
Genre: Contemporary YA
Binding: eARC
Page Count: Goodreads says 304 so I assume around that.
Part of a series? I don't think so but man I would read a sequel.
Got via: Edelweiss.
Amazon / Book Depository / Indiebound
(Summary from goodreads): The summer before her junior year, paleontology geek Natalie Page lands a coveted internship at an Ice Age dig site near Austin. Natalie, who’s also a plus-size fashion blogger, depends on the retro style she developed to shield herself from her former bullies, but vintage dresses and perfect lipstick aren’t compatible with prospecting for fossils in the Texas heat. But nothing is going to dampen Natalie’s spirit — she’s exactly where she wants to be, and she gets to work with her hero, a rock-star paleontologist who hosts the most popular paleo podcast in the world. And then there’s Chase the intern, who’s seriously cute, and Cody, a local boy who’d be even cuter if he were less of a grouch.
It’s a summer that promises to be about more than just mammoths.
Until it isn’t.
When Natalie’s hero turns out to be anything but, and steals the credit for one of her accomplishments, Nat has to unearth the confidence she needs to stand out in a field dominated by dudes. To do this, she’ll have to let her true self shine, even if that means defying all the rules for the sake of a major discovery.
Review: This is a book that I would like much more on a reread than on a first read, but that isn't the fault of the book as much as the fault of books I've read in the past. See, Mammoth is a book where for about 50% of the book, things could go two drastically different ways. And one of those ways, I would be writing a really critical review with a lot of links and also possibly being a little traumatized, and the other is how it actually went.
I liked how it went.
See, Natalie is, to paraphrase a person I follow on Twitter who's very eloquent about these things, still at an earlier point in her body acceptance journey. I mean, she is a teenager. For probably the first half of the book, there's a lot of talk about the bullying Natalie's experienced, her insecurities, her mental obsession with guessing the weight of people she meets (only people perceived as women, though, I noticed), an obsession with shapewear*, food issues. It can be hard to read at times.
(*God I hated how much shapewear was a thing in this. You're in Texas in the summer! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO YOURSELF. Bodies are allowed to be lumpy and bumpy, and people realize you're fat no matter how much you squish yourself down!)
And if it had gone in the direction of Natalie deciding that her body is wrong and there was something wrong with her/the dieting route, I wouldn't be recommending it. I am very grateful to say that isn't how it went down. As the book goes on, Natalie grows more confident in herself, her body, and especially her capabilities and abilities. It's a great journey and I think that will reflect a lot of peoples' own journey.
Plot Talk: Uh, I think between the start of the review and the summary, we've got enough of a plot summary, right? I don't want this review to be five thousand words.
However, I definitely appreciated how much of the book is actually about paleontology. Sometimes you get contemporary YA that has a really cool premise and then they never actually use that premise, and I was so happy that this wasn't one of them. There's a lot of information about it, and Natalie spends a lot of time actually working. It's nice to see a book where the premise isn't just background for drama.
And, frankly, I'm glad the plot was about more than just Natalie's body/body issues. She's allowed to be fat and also actually DO things.
Characters: I don't want to spend too much time on characters because sometimes I feel like I get repetative and this review is really long already, but the author made interesting choices with characters. Natalie is a popular fashion blogger. That puts her more in the spotlight/public eye than the average teen in her situation. Of course she'd use fashion and makeup and all that as armour to keep from getting hurt. Being fat on the internet is hard. That absolutely makes sense.
My other favourite thing was that the character who would usually be her worst enemy, the thin/blond/popular/rich girl is treated like a human being and given an arc herself, and she and Natalie become friends over time. It's so good to see that. She isn't reduced solely to a "mean girl" and the female relationships in this are strong.
PG-13 stuff: There's some underage drinking (which they get in big trouble for, lol) and some language and whatnot. One of the guys Natalie kisses also gets really handsy and she has to be rather forceful pushing him away. She's not like super upset by it, but she does decide she didn't like that all.
Content warnings for food guilt type talk (Natalie is very uncomfortable eating in front of people in the beginning of the book, and doesn't eat enough at first around the other interns, along with a bit of other food morality talk), fat hate, that weird weight guessing thing, a fair amount of self-hate at first, possibly self-harm (Natalie has a habit of snapping a hair elastic against her wrist when she's stressed, to the point of leaving welts) aaaand another character is pretty seriously injured towards the end of the book. I think that's everything. Oh, wait, Natalie's clothing sizes are very specifically said several times in the book. People disagree on how they feel about that, but yanno. Thought I'd mention it.
Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: This honestly lacks diversity in many ways. Texas is not this white and Austin is not this straight. There's like no queer or brown people in this. I find it very hard to believe over the course of a summer being in Austin that Natalie never meets another fat person. She goes thrifting and manages to find stuff so there has to be other fat people in the city. She couldn't even see a fat tourist or something?
This is honestly kind of a pet peeve of mine in fat YA. Why is the MC always the only fat character? It's so isolating. And because Natalie's sizes are mentioned (rather often), it is very apparent that she's a smaller fat person and therefore has more privilege than a superfat person. She doesn't, for instance, need a seatbelt extender on an airplane and doesn't worry about having to buy a second seat or being kicked off the plane or anything like that. Though the shirt doesn't fit right due to sizing inconsistently, she can in fact find her size in the gift shop of the dig site and it seems to be the largest size they carry besides the "unisex" XL. Which is not that large of a size, let's be real.
I liked Natalie, and for the most part I liked this book, but fat rep in YA can be a very narrow experience, almost always (not always, but almost) consisting of nonqueer white girls between a US size sixteen and US twenty, usually who are into fashion... and often vintage or vintage-inspired fashion, at that. And Natalie is another of those. And it's not like we're swimming in fat rep in YA so it always sucks to criticize this, but those shouldn't be the only people who are represented.
...this went into more of a rant than a review, but. It's still true.
Cover comments: I like the cover. It's simple, but cute and Natalie is on the cover and she's rather clearly actually fat. I'm very into covers of fat positive YA where you can actually see their bodies.
Also since I don't have a section for this - there are a few illustrations of Natalie in the book. They're illustrations of some of the "outfit of the day" posts she does on her blog. Again, they show her actually visibly fat. I wish they had included one of her outfits where she wasn't wearing shapewear, but otherwise that was really neat. I liked seeing her illustrated with like thick calves and thighs and stuff.
Conclusion: Wow, this is getting long. This isn't the easiest book in the world to read. The first half especially is hard to read. And that is not a bad thing. Sometimes books make you feel things and sometimes those things don't always feel good and that's okay. And I spent a lot of the book figureatively holding my breath anxious about which direction this would take in the end.
This balances those complicated feelings really well, I'm glad to say. I think it is rewarding to read through Natalie's journey and you really root for her as she starts to believe in herself and stand up for herself. I won't lie and say I wouldn't enjoy reading about fat characters who are further along in their body acceptance journey, but anything with fat positivity in YA is a good start. I think it is well worth the read, but do go into knowing that it can be emotionally difficult to read at times. Overall, I recommend it, and I'm giving this four roses out of five. If I had quarter roses, I would probably give it 3.75 due to things mentioned in my cons section, but I don't so I'm rounding up a bit.
(Roses)
Other notes:
- My eARC was really messed up formatting-wise. I never hold that against the book, but I do wanna mention it because it's annoying. For some reason the publisher's giant logo showed up every page or two, and in general it had bad a lot of bad formatting.
- I feel like Natalie's relationship with her mother, and her mother's food/weight relationship (she's mentioned to diet a lot and stuff like that, but only briefly) was underexplored and could have been left out.
That's all I've got today!
Peace and cookies,
Laina
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