Turns out Haylah is pretty funny for a girl...

In this novel, we follow Haylah better known as Pig. She's a plus size teen (as if that alone wasn't hard) taking care of her little brother along with her single mom and has a big crush on a kid at school so when he ask her to help him write jokes for a competition, she can't help but agree.

Now, this plot might sound a bit familiar knowing all the YA books out there, but this book has something that none of the others have: Haylah.

While her self-deprecating humor can be a bit much sometimes, I have rarely connected as much with a protagonist and keep in mind that's she's fourteen and I'm in my mid-twenty. But where so maybe have tried over the years to relate the reality of being different and social anxiety, Rebecca Elliott actually managed to capture it and put it into words for us. What could have been gold mines of second-hand embarassment actually managed to be relatable annecdotes that I think most of us would understand, no matter the age.

The comedy is also amazing in here. I actually shared one of the jokes with my mother (after of course translating it for her) and she actually cried (and maybe peed herself a little bit) because of how much she was laughing. Haylah is an inherently funny character makes the jokes instead of being one. Noah, her little brother, is also a laugh riot and can make any scene he's in so much better. He also asks some very pertinent questions.

Of course, the rest of the characters are also great, proving themselves to be a great ensemble. From her feminist mother to her two amazing best friends passing by the young black man who struggles with being seen for what he really is, Elliott actually managed to create a diverse and interesting menagerie that we could all find among our friends and families. None of them actually manage to fall into clichés, instead always finding ways to keep us on our toes.

All in all, this book is a great way to teach teens (and adults) that it's okay to be who you are and that girls can be funny too. That and has any of us really ever seen a chimpanzee take a bath?

I think this book is middle of the road. It isn't bad but it also isn't the best thing I've ever read. I'm always really weary when reading books about a fat protagonist. Too often they become stories about how the protagonist has lost the weight and now everyone loves them. I am happy to see that this book does not have that happen. But at the same time Haylah talks about being fat every single page. She even has people call her pig. I get that she does it as a way of protecting herself (beat them to the joke) but it still seemed like a lot considering everyone time a kid talked to her they called her pig. In normal life we don't use our friends names/nicknames in every sentence we exchange. Putting that aside the book was a quick read about being a young girl finding her way in London. I liked the thought of making her a feminist because of the ideas instilled by her single mother but I feel like that also got lost a lot. (Her mother won't let her shave even though she's asking to do so because she doesn't love her hairy legs not because of a boy?) I also like at the end she didn't agree to go out with the boy but did make him change the way he interacted with her before allowing him to spend actual time with her. I think there are good messages in this book if you look close enough. I think the message gets lost a bit here and there but you're able to catch it popping up. I read this book in a few hours and I'd recommend it to someone if they needed a quick read and didn't wanna think too hard.

Readers will LOVE Haylah, though they'll be frustrated with some of her decisions at times. But through mistakes come growth. Haylah is a funny fat girl - and those are traits that, separately and together, need to be seen as positives to younger readers more often.

Unfortunately, the writing style was just not for me and I ended up marking this as a did not finish. While it wasn’t for me, I do believe others will enjoy it. I may try to pick it up again in the future.

Thank you net galley for the advance reader copy of this novel. I was excited to read this contemporary ya novel about a girl stand up comedian. The summary and cover did a great job to lure me in but about 30% in, my interest was done and I had read enough. The main character Haylah wants to be a stand up comedian. The author takes a long time to describe and set the scene for the reader that the storyline didn't keep my attention especially when the main character is overweight and that seems to be a major point of this novel. I may come back to this one at some point but there just wasn't the draw for this one that thought.

I really did not enjoy this. It was very different from what I was expecting. I was expecting something much lighter than this turned out to be, and, ya know, actually funny. My main issue with the book was Haylah, though. She crossed the line from self deprecating to self hating almost immediately and never really seemed to come back. Her inner dialogue read like a bitter, insecure, middle aged woman, and I just hated being in that headspace. This was not body positive at all, it actually seemed the opposite. And as far as Haylah taking the jokes and turning them around on the people trying to make fun of her, like calling herself Pig? It really didn't work and was just super cringey. Kind of like a Michael Scott level of awkwardness but with no redeeming qualities so it's not funny it's just super uncomfortable. I didn't really feel like I got to know the other characters very well, so it was just me and Haylah and we did not hit it off.

The main character is truly what brings down this book. A wonderful premise and an exciting one at that, but the entire book is filled with her stating that "she is fat." It is off putting and very abrasive. The first page says that she is fat about 3-4 times and it was just miserable to read. The voice and tone were fine, but the main character genuinely was terrible. She wasn't nice, she didn't deserve much of what she got, and it took forever to finish. I wanted to see more of who she was outside of being "fat" as she describes, but I never got that. Some parts were good, but they didn't keep me wanting to read. If it wasn't for an ARC I would have never finished this one, unfortunately.

Quirky, fast read.
Haylah Swinton has always wanted to be a comedian when she grows up, she knows how to make her friends laugh and can turn being the butt of a joke into an identity that she proudly claims. When she has a chance to work with fellow comedian and senior hottie, Leo, she jumps at the chance, even if it costs her her friends.

I like that Haylah was pretty outwardly confident, even if she didn't always feel like it inside. She owned the name Pig and is a pretty likable girl. I could see how having a guy like you when you've never experienced that before can make you act differently. Especially when he's a popular guy and you're having a hard time believing he has any feelings. I didn't like that Haylah did a complete 180 and shut out her friends because they were looking out for her. Also, what she did to her mom was pretty terrible and made me like her less.

The ending was good and Haylah tried to make up for her mistakes and stood up for what she wanted. I didn't so much care for the bit of romance thrown in at the very end, it was a little forced I thought.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.

*3.5

First off thank you to NetGalley and Peachtree Publishing for providing me an ARC of this book. I had really high hopes for this one going in since I love comedy especially female comedians. It was a fun read, but wasn't all that I had hoped for.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was the level of self-deprication by the main character. It just felt very repetitive and for no real reason. There were times it felt like the author felt the need to remind us every couple pages that Haylah was fat. It just tried to drive that point home a little too hard.

Overall I loved the concept and found myself invested, but the pacing could have been a tad bit better as it felt slow from time to time. The scenes where comedy was at the forefront were by far my favorite and the wit was really strong.

Thanks to Myrick Marketing & Media, LLC for providing a digital ARC of Pretty Funny For a Girl in exchange for an honest review.

I love flawed characters. I love watching them grow and change into or despite their flaws. But there is a difference between being flawed and being unlikable and if your MC falls into the latter and barely fixes any of her flaws and you expect me to root for her happy ending.

Haylah is kind of awful to everyone in her life. She's self obsessed and self interested and its brushed over with 'she's fat she's insecure' but in a story that seems like it's trying to be about self acceptance I was also waiting for Haylah to accept the fact that her personality flaws exist and owning them, not just abruptly having a bunch of side characters show up in the last act to tell her 'she's a lot more attractive than she thinks she is'.

Technically, Haylah does apologize for the some of the awful choices she makes, but it reads as her running out of characters that like her, feeling lonely and literally just saying the words 'I'm sorry' without analyzing what she's sorry about, and then having that character admit that they were also at fault which just made the whole thing feel a lot less like growth and a lot more like Haylah being manipulative.

I appreciate what this book was trying to do. I really do. But I definitely did not appreciate this book.

Suffice to say it that this book reminded me of my (awkward, chubby, emotionally-volatile, epically disastrous) thirteen-year-old self in a way I can't even begin to explain. Yeah...can't explain why, but I really did not feel great about myself reading this one :p However, "Pretty Funny" is lively and interesting, and I really appreciated Haylah's growth - and her jokes. Got some good laughs reading this, even if I wanted to punch Leo into the sun on at least six occasions.

Thank you to Peachtree Publishing for sending me an ARC of this book.

I love comedy and I love YA, so I figured if you put the two together I would love it even more... and I was correct. 

Haylah loves comedy and wants to be a stand-up comedian but she isn't ready to get up on stage herself yet, so she starts ghostwriting for a comedian she has a crush on. 

I knew with the premise that it would either be degrading to funny girls or that it would be empowering, and it was definitely the latter. At the beginning of the book, I was worried about the premise.

I was also worried about the opening itself, where was Haylah being hard on herself and her body. To my delight, the book ended up being very body positive. 

Haylah could be a little unlikeable sometimes and I found myself getting frustrated at her for pushing everyone away, but then she would do something very human and it reminded me that she was an actual human and not just being a melodramatic teenager. 

Overall, I'd give this book a solid 3.5 stars. It was a delightfully charming British comedy that will make fans of standup smile.

Thank you to Myrick Marketing & Media, LLC for an ARC through Netgalley for an honest review.

DNF at 33%

When I first read the description, I thought the book sounded interesting. There aren't a lot of YA out here where the main lead wants to be a comedian. Especially girls wanting to be comedians. I figured I'd give it a shot even though I never heard of Rebecca Elliott. The first few pages caught my attention with her dancing with Ron Weasley in her dream, but when reality set in, I realized that I was going to end up very disappointed.

Haylah should be an interesting character. She should be a fun character. She wants to be a comedian and make people laugh. That is her goal in life. Not to become rich and famous, but to make people laugh. I could respect that. Using humor, however, is a very common defense mechanism for bigger people. Big people are usually used as comedic relief in movies or TV shows, because that's what they've had to do their whole lives. If people aren't going to like me because I don't adhere to society's rules about beauty, then let me be funny. Everyone likes the funny person. Even when the joke is at their expense. It was obvious when taunts and jokes upset her, but she just went along with it, "reclaimed" the joke, and suddenly it was okay.

I felt this was a dangerous precedence to set with young girls. Bullying is NEVER okay, and I'm surprised that this was brushed over. I understand not all schools are created equal, but it almost felt that the author wrote Haylah's current school as a crappy school as a joke within itself. It wasn't funny. The setting in this book is supposedly England, so perhaps it's different over there. I wouldn't have known if the author didn't have Haylah strategically say where they lived.

Also, I'm tired of fat people in books being covertly described as lazy. Haylah's house is described as being messy and cluttered and have junk everywhere. This is a pretty common stereotype use for fat people or fat families. I'm over it. Yes, Haylah's mom is a nurse and a single mom, and Haylah is taking care of her brother (who is just annoying throughout the 110 pages I read), so of course the house isn't always clean. But this common with bigger characters. They are always written as lower-income or lazy. It's tiresome and boring.

My biggest pet peeve of this story is how "not like other girls" the author really tried to push Haylah as being. "I don't care about boys!" "I don't care about kissing!" "Make up is the devil and society's beauty standards suck!" Yes, she wholeheartedly accepts her friends as they navigate adolescence and experiment with makeup or liking boys or gossiping about boys and other NORMAL teenage stuff. A teenage girl does necessarily have to be into any of that, but it was so obvious and pandering that it was insulting.

There's also the fact that when we were reading Haylah's jokes and journal entries, the author wasn't using the British way of spelling. I'm hoping that before now and the release date, anyone who is editing this book will realize this.

I wanted to like this book, but for the reasons I stated above I just couldn't. I'm tired of fat chicks being the joke. Even if it's one they made themselves. It's 2020. Time to do better for our younger generation.

Thank you netgalley and publisher for this early copy!

DNF - I did not realize this was a download only ARC and do not have the ability to read via a computer. Thanks for the chance.