I love stories about twins (such as I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb i read so many years ago and must say Mark Ruffalo did A magnificent job playing). Funny Wally Lamb also wrote "She's Come Undone" about obesity! 

Sorry this is Diana Clarke, I'm forgetting myself. I loved this book merely because I love the connection between twins and that's really well depicted here. But as one of them literally starves, the other gorges (sounds like me)! I think this is a very important book for women in any decade in time dealing with issues about our bodies and the psychological way it happens. That's why I love happy overweight people, because they are comfortable in their bodies and I'm jealous in A good way.

Anyway, I loved the connection in this book, the differences and the love they shared. Beautiful story, sad and happy!

A special thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers for my ARC of this book!

I was not able to finish reading this book for a few reasons. First of all, the subject matter was so heavy that I just could not get engaged with the book. Yes, this is a relevant and current issue, but I just did not think it was compellingly written. Also, the language was so esoteric that I never felt pulled in to the story itself. I just was ultimately not able to relate to the language or content of this story.

While this book is fiction, it reads with the immediacy and intimacy of a mental health memoir. Protagonist Rose chronicles her life alongside her twin sister Lily. In the beginning, Lily is the socially saught after twin, the one that knows how to look and act to gain the attention of the "it" girls at their school. After Rose latches on to an unhealthy apple-a-day diet the ringleader of their clique suggests, she eclipses Lily in their social circle, all the other girls envious of her newfound weight loss and lean physique. Her new social status and problems at home push Lily into a dangerous relationship with food that quickly turns into anorexia. Thin Girls chronicles her highs and lows from her preteen years to 24-- an intervention, inpatient therapy, and a desire to recover that sparks hope time and again but remains elusive through the majority of the book. While Rose grows smaller, Lily continues to gain weight, and both women struggle to define themselves beyond the number they see before them on the scale.

While I connected deeply with the characters and recommend the novel to those that are interested in the subject matter, I'd like to caution that this book could be incredibly triggering for those struggling with disordered eating themselves. There's a particularly difficult stretch of the book that touches on the pro-ana community that made me consider putting it aside. There's also a fair amount of internalized homophobia the main character works through that was hard to read.

Things I loved
+the voice and energy of the book
+the discussion around what a healthy v. unhealthy relationship looks like (in familial relationships, romantic relationships, and friendship)
+the glimpses into how Rose processes the world around her via the discarded books she finds at her facility and the truths she finds in them. (An example: she finds a book on insects and likens the strange facts she finds about everything from termites to bees to the comparable human behaviors she sees around her)
+the discussion this book provides around the faux feminism pushed by social media influencers and how dangerous it can be when people start pushing "health" advice to sell dangerous products

The thing I didn't love:
+Throughout the book, you get several short stories written by Lily's character. These are actually short stories that the author has published in various literary magazines that are linked on her website. The stories took me out of the narrative. (That said, I realize they were there to emphasize the near-psychic relationship shared by the twins.)

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harper for the e-arc they provided in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. What a fantastic debut novel for Diana Clarke. I finished this about a week ago, but was at a loss for words (and I still am, to be honest).

I agree with all of the positive reviews on here--it's moving, current, and everyone should read it.
This book is particularly relevant for women. We live in a world where we're constantly pressured to be thinner, prettier, and hyper-sexualized.

“Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”
-Tina Fey, Bossypants

Rose, the main character, is an identical twin to Lily. While they may look alike and share the same DNA, Lily is deemed as "the cool twin" by the most popular girl in school, Jemima.
(*Side note: As a twin, let me just say that this situation happens ALL THE TIME--especially in youth. Labels like "the cool twin", "the evil twin", etc. may feel like you're looking at two people as individuals, but you're still comparing them to each other. It's really detrimental going to bed thinking you're the "unwanted one". Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, lol.)

Naturally, Rose begins to measure her own self-worth by how much affection she receives from Jemima. When Jemima brings up a diet that involves eating one apple a day and nothing else(!!!), Rose decides she is going to follow the diet religiously. As you might imagine, she began losing a lot of weight. It became obsessive for her, because the more weight she lost, the more Jemima welcomed her in. The food Rose didn't eat at dinner was eaten by Lily. As Rose starved, Lily binged. Skinny twin, fat twin.

Diana Clarke wrote a story that, at the surface seems to be about one girl with anorexia, but in reality speaks to the culture in which we, as women, live in. It's impossible not to compare yourself to Rose or Lily (or maybe even Jemima) throughout this book. If you take one thing from this review let it be to add this to your TBR immediately!

Thank you Harper Collins and NetGalley for this ARC!

The synopsis sounded so intriguing but in the end, this novel about anorexia nervosa left me feeling frustrated. I just couldn't tolerate all the flowery writing. It was nauseating to read. It's like enough with the all the empty, pretentious metaphors! Ugh. For that reason alone, I couldn't connect the twin sisters. Their opinions and feelings felt like an afterthought. Hard pass.

DNF @ 34%

This story of sisters, one in an in-patient facility for anorexia, and one overweight and looking for validation in men, just could not hold my attention. Every character seemed abysmal and I had a feeling it was not going to have a satisfying ending. I most enjoyed the flashbacks to the sisters' childhood but it wasn't enough for me to want to continue.

This book is really something! The twin storyline is really fascinating and so well-done, as is the relationship with Mim. Some portrayals of an eating disorder, I think, work really well; the pro-ana group, for example, as well as the fad diets during middle school. Other aspects didn't work as well; I couldn't believe, for example, someone hiding mashed potatoes in their armpits, or food in a hat. We don't get a lot of sensory or body details in those instances, which creates more distance too. While the ages to separate periods in the narrator's life are fine, I really had a hard time with the weights being listed over and over again. In some ways, this book feels like a textbook on how to have an eating disorder, or at least, how to have a very disordered relationship with your body. It's great to see our narrator begin recovery at the end, and her relationship with Mim and Grace is very heartwarming, but it's a gamble that readers will hang on that long, and that they'll be on the hook to erase all of the disordered eating guidebooks they've just read. Writing about eating disorders is really tricky in that way, so my take is, at least partially, a matter of personal preference; I'm sure some readers would find that revoluntionary. I also had a hard time believing that the mother is so entirely absent, and found it deeply depressing that the father never experiences real joy. I also found it hard to believe that the parents could continue confusing the girls when their weights become so radically different.

This book is heavy in meaning. However it’s a very slow start and hard to get into. I felt like I had to really drag myself to pick up my Kindle but in the end, it was a good book.

“Tʜᴇʏ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɴᴏ ᴄᴀʟᴏʀɪᴇs, ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛs, ɪᴅᴇᴀs, ᴍᴇᴍᴏʀɪᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ sᴛᴏʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ sᴛᴏᴍᴀᴄʜ.”

Rose and Lily Winters are twins, once inseparable, sharing a frequency ‘that sounded like nothing more than static to others’ until Lily begins to reach for a sun that doesn’t include Rose, longing to be her own person. Rose, no longer a child, is living in a rehabilitation facility for anorexia and managing to still keep Lily tethered to her with her all consuming need. Lily fills herself up with food, nourishment her twin refuses, serving as a distorted mirror. One sister stopped eating, the other started. Both sisters have disorderly eating, but how did they get here? It begins with Rose’s awkwardness and the treason of Lily’s popularity, her quest to refuse the fusion (complete twinship) that Rose needs to feel real. For Lily walks in the light- the smarter, cooler, more outspoken, friendlier twin and Rose is happy to be a creature living in her shadow, so long as she is always along for the ride. Lily loves Rose, but she longs to be different, she hungers to be more than a twin, to have something that is hers alone. When Jemima “Mim” Gates befriends Lily in their youth she is a threat and Rose won’t let her come between them with her popular clique, until Rose learns the fashion of being thin and changes everything.

Through the years, Rose buries secrets she won’t confront within herself by denying her body vital sustenance, a form of self-punishment, though she won’t understand that for a long time to come. Her parent’s marriage crumbles, full of self-denials, and both have tuned out. As the girls come of age, their unhealthy twinship sends them spinning in adulthood. Lily teaches kindergarten when she isn’t fretting over her sister’s health, trying to eat for the two of them, helpless to do anything more. When she falls in love with a married man named Phil, who urges her to put distance between she and Rose, pointing out how disturbingly tangled (co-dependent) they are, Rose is terrified of losing Lily. Worse, he is controlling her- how dare he think he can come between them? Lily is the only family she really has, since their father has fallen apart and their mother has a whole new life. Phil cannot ‘guide’ Lily with Rose’s voice always in her head. It’s for Lily’s own good that he drive a wedge between them.

Lily is done with over-eating, she is yet again abruptly changing her direction in life, throwing Rose’s world into chaos. Phil thinks she looks good now that she is losing weight, and according to Lily, he is just the motivation she needs. Then there is the terror of Lara Bax and YourWeigh that definitely isn’t a diet! It’s a ‘holistic health guide’, one that includes diet bars with zero calories that fill you up! Now it’s Rose’s turn to see her sister unraveling, her flesh disappearing. It gives her a purpose to get out of the facility, but will she be too late to save Lily when she can’t be bothered to rescue herself? What is self-love to someone feasting on indifference? They are both victims and manipulators, expired products of their parents rotten marriage, twins who don’t seem to have enough spiritual nourishment for both to thrive.

This is one of the saddest novels I’ve read, though it’s about the distortion of female bodies, and all the eating disorders that devour women of all ages, it also exposes the darker side of relationships between friends, family and lovers. The imbalance, the way we manipulate loved ones or allow ourselves to be used, abused and don’t know how to let go or change, is disturbing. Rose hurts herself, but in doing so keeps Lily on a leash, always proving her love through worry. It’s destroying them both. Often, we shuck one unhealthy dependency for another and call it something new. Love can be suffocating, bonds can give us roots but they can also keep us in a place that is slowly killing us. Must love be brutal, painful and punishing? It seems so for Lily, and for Rose too.

Things are shaken up when a celebrity enters rehab and forces Rose to remember uncomfortable things about her sexuality. Can a vanishing body still feel desire? Rose is very much a body, it’s been her entire focus and means of control for so long but where has the rest of her gone? The past isn’t done with her, and the very person who started it all (Mim) may well be a part of the end.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would as it takes some dark turns and not everyone finds their salvation. We really do get in the way of the ones we love and can be shamefully selfish. What we do to ourselves, we do to each other. It’s provocative, intense, and engaging. I went away with the thought, “even those of us who think we don’t have an issue with food, likely do”, as I already know it’s an impossibility to be alive without complicated relationships that cost us, or someone else something heavy. Yes, read it!

Publication Date: June 30th 2020

HarperCollins Publishers

Harper

Thank you to HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book.
I wish that I could say I liked this book better; however, it was just so heavy. I felt weighed down by the subject matter throughout the entirety. I get that it wasn't supposed to be uplifting but this just wasn't for me. I've seen other people compare it to Girl, Interrupted and I can definitely relate to that opinion. I think the subject matter is important to discuss but all combined, it was just a little too much for me.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THIN GIRLS by Diana Clarke in exchange for my honest review.***

I think this book was good, but could have been great. Thin girls explores disordered eating, abusive relationships, addiction, issues with sexual identity.  The first part of the book was reminiscent of Girl, Interrupted. The similarities irritated me. 
Throughout the book we’re facts and references to books that also irritated me. The main character is supposed to be quirky and somewhat awkward, but I found myself skimming over because I didn’t think it really added to the story other than to slow the plot. 
Overall, I would recommend the book. I do think it does an excellent job of drawing attention to various ways people are triggered into eating disorders.

Thin Girls by Diana Clarke could also be titled "Trigger Warning" as the topics that lead this book are all sensitive topics. Eating disorders, mental health, sexuality, relationships, sex....Everything is covered.

Rose and Lily are twins. They feel each other's emotions, they taste each other's feelings, they hurt along side each other. As the girls grow older both struggle with control - Rose with eating, Lily with sex and relationships with men.

The chapters of this book are fluid - moving back and forth from 'modern day' to the past - showing the struggle of youth and the struggle Rose faces every day in the rehab facility where she's been living for the past year.

This is a hard book to write about because it's painful. My heart ached for both Rose and Lily while they worked through their struggles and pain. With every new chapter, I hoped that there would be a resolution to their pain.

Diana Clarke is clearly a talented writer and this book is only the beginning.

Thanks to netGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I have a final copy preordered! I adored this. I think it is honest, wonderful and smart. The characters grow well and learn. Their is great portrayals of eating disorders are true and clear. I enjoyed it and was so excited to find it.

A gorgeously written novel about the physical consequences of suppressing pain. Using identical twins to explore this gives the novel an honest and startling depth. Rose's interjections about animal behavior were equally fascinating and relevant. An extraordinary debut. I will be looking for more from Diana Clarke.

Even if you’ve experienced mental illness yourself, it can be hard to understand and empathize with someone else’s. We see people who are depressed and wonder why they can’t just snap out of it. We see people who are in abusive relationships and are flabbergasted that they can’t walk away. And when someone self-harms or refuses to eat for so long that they run the risk of dying, our response is to shout at them and shove food at them. We expect people to fix themselves. Diana Clarke’s devastating novel, Thin Girls, takes us deep into the world of disordered eating with Rose Winters. Thin Girls is thankfully a book about healing, ultimately, but Rose’s journey back to corporeality and health is brutally real.

Rose and Lily were identical in all ways but one until they turned 14. Their only difference was Lily’s mole. But, like many twins, the girls are treated like two halves of one whole by many people—so much so that Rose’s identity was deeply enmeshed in Lily’s until Lily started to make other friends. It’s tempting to try and identify the precise moment when Rose became an anorexic and Lily started to value men more than she valued herself, but I feel like that would be the wrong approach to Thin Girls (and to understanding eating disorders, as well). The seeds were there, sure, but this book is about the work it takes to undo the damage anorexia does to the body, the mind, and the soul.

Thin Girls is narrated by Rose, with occasional asides in the form of Lily’s writing, letters from an old friend, and facts that are recalled from the nonfiction books that have been abandoned at the facility were Rose spends much of the first part of the novel. Rose moves back and forth in time to show us how she and Lily grew apart, how her anorexia developed, how her sexuality was repeatedly repressed, and how she finds the right person to help her through her recovery. Rose frequently reflects on what it’s like to be hungry, to be so malnourished that one’s own body starts to fail. At times, Rose recalls trying to be two-dimensional or to disappear entirely. This is why I described Rose’s recovery as a path back to corporeality. Rose has to learn how to rejoin her body and the real world in order to leave behind the death spiral of her eating disorder.

In addition to its psychological realism about eating disorders, I really appreciated Clarke’s portrayal of Rose’s relationship with Jemima. So many romantic relationships in fiction either concentrate on fireworks (a la romance novels) or their trials and tribulations (as in so many works of literary fiction). There is, of course, a place for fireworks and for tumult, but what I really love about how Rose and Jemima’s relationship is its tenderness. After all of the damage they’ve done, these women can be caring of and gentle with each other. The brief moments when Jemima makes Rose wait to get into a hot bath or take a sip of fresh coffee so that she doesn’t accidentally burn herself had me tearing up; these moments are pure love—and a much needed dose of emotional relief after the harrowing of the first two-thirds of Thin Girls.

Thin Girls is a shattering read, but one I would recommend (with all the necessary trigger warnings, of course). It is brilliantly written and so true to the characters that I had no problem imagining Rose, Lily, their calorie/perfection obsessed mother, their alcoholic father, Rose’s frenemy-turned-lover Jemima, and the rest of the cast existing somewhere out there in the real world. I think this book has the potential to help us understand what it’s like to have an eating disorder—to really take us inside the mind of someone with anorexia—that it can teach us to not to expect that a slice of cake can cure someone or that we can just show someone their illogic and that they will snap out of their disordered eating. Thin Girls is one of the best books about mental illness that I’ve ever read.

This book deals with exceptionally important issues relating to body image, body dysmorphia, the spectrum of eating disordered behaviour (though mostly on anoretics), diet culture, influencer culture, abuse, being a member of the LGBTQI+ community (and the heightened prevalence of eating disorders therein) and the entrenchment of disordered behaviour in families. For tackling these issues in a way that is entertaining and vital I applaud this book. Unfortunately I cannot bring myself to like Thin Girls because it felt, to me at least, exploitative. It read not as the dramatization of a survivors story (I apologise to the author if this is incorrect) but rather as a warts and all tale of eating disorders written by someone that had trawled “pro-ana” forums the week before writing a first draft. The awful message around treatment, which is presented as at best ridiculous and at worst harmful, is irresponsible. Many excellent treatment programs exist for eating disorders. I (Asst Prof in a Psychiatry Dept) have never heard of patients being asked to flirt with their food as a form of therapy. Where did the author find out about this? I do not deny that there are crappy treatment programs out there but I find it utterly ridiculous that an eating disorder as entrenched as that presented here is cured via roasted vegetables and a seaside cottage. This book will be sought out by eating disordered individuals (famously, and this is something that the author clearly knows, people with eating disorders love to read material that will give them new ideas for weight loss) and the message that treatment is not the answer is a dangerous one.

Yes, the skewering of influencer and diet culture is necessary. Yes, the heightened prevalence of eating disorders (and suicide among other terrible things) in the LGBTQI+ community must be examined, drawn attention to, researched and ultimately prevented. But these messages were lost between the nasty back and forth between the sisters, the apparent lack of research, and the voyeuristic tone and ghoulish look at sufferers of a lethal disease. 

This book is triggering. If you have had an eating disorder (or if you currently have one) then I would say avoid this book. The tips and tricks are innumerable and I wish the author had found a way to avoid them. If you are looking for an interesting and well researched book on eating disorders I would recommend Wasted by Marya Hornbacher. Though this book is equally triggering (I think that Hornbacher has been quoted as saying that she wishes she had omitted the tips from her book) it is grounded in scientific inquiry as well as personal experience.

Rose and Lily are twins and develop an unhappy relationship with food from a very young age after getting a lot of this behavior from their mother.  Rose becomes anorexic, while Lily continues to overeat and gain unhealthy amounts of weight.  Most of this book is rooted in Rose's attempt at recovery and her illness.  It affects her relationships and eventually she reaches a turning point and starts to improve.  During this time, Lily is in an abusive relationship and starts to lose weight in unhappy ways.  I kept hoping this book was going to go somewhere, but it just seemed to drag on.  I thought the stories and tidbits in the chapters tended to be interesting, but not enough for me to really care about this book.  I think it is an important subject, but this was not the way to cover this.

In this novel we follow two young girls discovering themselves. This was well written and the characters were well written as well. The storyline was great. This novels tackles a lot of great themes such as female friendships, body image, sisterhood and so many other topics. This is a great for for young audiences. A hard-hitting YA contemporary not to be missed.

What is a "thin girl?" A thin girl shrinks herself to nothingness.  A thin girl deprives herself of the most basic human needs.  A thin girl does not feel whole until she ceases to exist.  A thin girl is veritably explored in Diana Clarke's debut novel, Thin Girls.  Thin Girls, a literary masterpiece, follows anorexic Rose and her relationship with food, as well as her relationship with her twin sister Lily through their teenage years into young adulthood.  This exploitative and harrowing novel takes readers into the devastating depths of disordered eating, and tells the story of twins and how far they will go to save each other.

Lily and Rose are identical ... exactly the same.  Except for the mole on Lily's back, there is nary a difference between them, even down to their weight.  Exactly the same.  The twins are so close, their sameness so entwined in who they are, that they can't even imagine being different.  But after a series of defining events starting in high school, Rose's body begins dramatically wilting away while Lily's blossoms and balloons.  One twin is now severely underweight, the other over.  Fast forward several years, and Rose finds herself in a treatment facility, while Lily begins a relationship with a questionable, married man.  With both sisters teetering on the edge of destruction, can they help themselves, and in turn, save each other?  

Compelling, haunting, and intense, Diana Clarke's Thin Girls tells a raw, believable story about the all-consuming power of eating disorders.  It is no secret that many women are raised to have an unhealthy relationship with food; hating themselves for every "guilty" bite they put into their bodies, and never feeling like they are good enough in their own skin.  Clarke's Thin Girls takes this relationship to the extreme, showing how anorexia takes over one young woman's life and strips it to bare nothingness.  Clarke writes as if she herself has lived with disordered eating, or else she has studied it closely, making this novel feel true-to-life and all the more excruciating.  With that being said, those who have suffered from an eating disorder or an unhealthy relationship with food may find themselves uncomfortable or triggered by the contents of this explicitly descriptive book, and should be advised that this read may not be for everyone.

Interwoven in this story of anorexia is Rose's equally unhealthy relationship with her sister Lily.  Although Rose loves Lily more than any person on this Earth, their relationship has always been perilous, dramatic, and extreme.  Clarke explores their sisterly bond and shows how the interconnectedness of twins is a most unusual, yet fascinating thing.  Rose and Lily can no more separate themselves from each other, than they can live without food or air.  Their relationship is intricate and entangled, and adds an interesting, important aspect to this utterly gripping novel.

Thin Girls will be enjoyed by readers of dark, edgy exposés.  If you like your fiction raw and your characters deep, melancholic, and slightly dangerous, check this one out.   

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Probably the best book I’ve read this year. Profoundly moving story of twins Rose and Lily who are both struggling with their own demons. Rose is battling a vicious eating disorder that is possibly going to end her life, Lily is dealing with physical and psychological abuse from someone who claims to love her. Coming from a very dysfunctional background both women are struggling to find a way to cope. Raw, sometimes hard to read story that will stay with you for a long time. Highly recommend.