This was a cute and fun YA book!
I liked the writers style of writing and how the book really flowed together.
I also liked the message behind the story that the author was conveying..
I definitely think this is geared more towards the younger YA side though.

Very middle of the road. I struggled with the main character- her personality and fat shaming made me dislike her where it seemed like she was meant to be more awkward and loveable.

The premise was interesting with the stand up comedy focus but I was hoping for it to be a bit more Mrs. Maisel than it was.

3 stars- nothing to write home about- would probably not recommend.

Funny, whimsical and awkward, it encompasses everything a modern teenage goes through. Body image, love, friendship. 
I loved this book! It surpassed all my expectations. In the beginning, i was no sure it would be my cup of tea (a socially awkward person myself, i do not normally enjoy all the possible situations that my future may bestow me).
Also, i feel like it goes along with some of the main contingencies a female comedian in the sexist stand-up sphere. 
This book helped me see, now an adult, how dramatic and kind of funny some of the stipulations and troubles me and my friends would have with boys and our own families. In those times, everything is black or white, either you love someone or you hate them. He or she is perfect, the one to sweep you of your feet or the devil who is trying to destroy your world. Later on, you realise he or she are just another teenager as a normal person like you. 
It was a nice change from the stereotypical Boy-meets-Girl love story.

Not for me. I disliked Haylah almost immediately. And that Isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the main character if it’s meant to be written that way.  But she was supposed to be relatable and for me she wasn’t. I feel like I was supposed to forgive her flaws because she is insecure, but the message seemed to be acceptance, which was contradictory. And she didn’t seem to grow or learn. Further I didn’t like  the fat centric jokes and self deprication. It was constant, despite the fact that Haylah states she doesn’t even think of herself as fat unless reminded of her weight. Also the “feminism” rubbed me the wrong way. Feminists can absolutely wear make up and dresses. Ugh. I ended up feeling frustrated most of the read.

This was pretty average and mediocre. I enjoyed the idea of a girl who loves stand-up comedy because I’m the same way. However, I didn’t like how much she focused on weight—and not just with herself, but with everyone in her life. 

The story was pretty predictable but the dialogue was fun and witty. In all this was just a meh story.

Haylah was a self described "comedy nerd". She watched every clip she could find, listened to any podcast available, and read all the books on the shelves in an effort to hone her craft. Yet, she kept her stand up comic aspirations a secret until an opportunity to help cool and popular, Leo, write his set for a competition arose and that had her contemplating if she had what it took to step up to the mic herself. 

I am going to start with my takeaway from this book, which was learning to believe in and love yourself. Haylah often talked about being fat. Sometimes she was ok with it and sometimes she wasn't. I thought this was rather realistic. From what I gathered, she was a 14 year old girl. I can understand her struggle with not fitting or even trying to subscribe to the beauty standard. Overall though, she seemed happy with herself, because for her, she would rather be funny than thin. I can imagine her, older and wiser, totally accepting her body, but I believed she was in a good place at fourteen. 

It's great seeing all these YA books about female comedians. It's a well known fact that the industry can be less than hospitable to women, but how fabulous to see these funny young women pursuing their dreams. Indeed, Haylah was funny, but it was dedication to the craft that I admired. The way she would go through her day, recording amusing bits for later, or all the research she did. She definitely showed that it was hard work, AND that she was more than willing to put in the time and effort to edge closer to making her dream a reality. 

This book wasn't just about becoming a comic. It was about family, friends, crushes, making mistakes, and making amends. I loved Haylah's family. She was being raised by her mother, who worked nights, and therefore, Haylah had to help out a lot with her little brother, Noah. He could be a handful, but they really shared a sweet and beautiful bond. Noah was such an injection of cute into this story too. 

There were some subplots in this book, where I saw Haylah make some mistakes, but also grow. Whether it be her mother jumping back into the romance game, her friends drifting away from her, or her first real crush, mistakes were made. Part of me really felt for Haylah, but another part of me wanted to give her good shake and tell her to snap out of it. However, I never gave up on her, and I am glad to say, she did not disappoint me. 

It was a delight to meet Haylah and watch her finally take the stage. I know there are going to be times where you will find yourself frustrated with Haylah, but all the steps, forwards and backwards, were part of her journey to being able to be her most authentic self. And yes, she was pretty funny for a girl.

Have you ever hated a main character so much that you wanted to throw your book out of the window? Because that's the way I felt about this book. In fact the only reason I didn't is because I read this on my iPad and I still need it for futher reading.  But oh my god, this main character is probably the worst one I've ever read about and the book just doesn't recognize it. I don't have an issue with unlikeable characters as long as they're meant to be that way. Haylah was supposed to be relatable and empowering but she wasn't. She constantly brought up her weight, which would have been alright if she hadn't gone on a huge monologue in the first chapter about how she barely even remembers she's fat until she's made fun off and then she does (which NEVER happens in this book by the way) and explode at anyone even mentioning her weight. She seems super unhappy with her weight but the plot makes us believe that she's actually super confident. Shit doesn't match up. Another thing the plot tried to tell us about her, that WASN'T the case at all is that Haylah is a super badass feminist that doesn't need a man. However, she shames every girl she comes across for being a typical girl and being interested in things that she isn't and from the second she first "meets" Leo (she sees him perform, she doesn't actually meet him) all of her inner dialogue that isn't about her being fat was about Leo. However, she doesn't like make-up and dresses, so she's a real feminist right? No, fuck her and her mom for teaching her that wearing make-up and dresses is anti-feminist and girls who do wear both make her whole life about being atractive to boys and only care about boys, boys, boys. Completely ignoring the fact that lesbians also wear make-up and dresses and the fact that most women wear make-up because they like it and because it's art form, not for some stupid DUDE. Especially because the mom starts wearing make-up once she starts dating someone and when her daughter questions her she gets mad at her because the mom is allowed to feel beautiful and attractive for once. YOU THOUGHT HER MAKE-UP IS BAD SO DON'T GET MAD WHEN SHE IS CONFUSED WHEN YOU WEAR IT. Whenever this book tried to do feminist rants it also kept talking about life is just so much easier for boys because they're confident and don't care about their looks and don't have to because girls will like them no matter how they look, which completely ignores all the insecurities MANY guys deal with on the daily. It also rubbed me the wrong way because at a certain point one of Haylah's friends has a crush on a guy and she doesn't get it because according to her he was ugly. Really? Saying guys don't have to worry about looks after you spend the whole book hating on a guy because of his looks? Yeah, that doesn't sit right with me. I also absolutely HATED how much Haylah hated her mom's love interest. She didn't have a valid reason for it. I mean, they try to play it off in the narrative as her being scared of the guy hurting her mom like her dad did BUT whenever Haylah mentioned him she only talked about how he had a beard and didn't wear socks and how that was gross and must mean he's a serial killer (she legit said that he had a "serial killer beard" like what the fuck does that mean?). She gets angry at her mom because she "doesn't know this guy", completely ignoring the fact that her mom has known him for over a year and he's actually a super nice guy and Haylah is actually the one not putting in effort to get to know him. Seriously, when it comes to this situation her 4 year old brother was more mature.  I've already ranted enough so I'm not going to say much more but we haven't even touched upon how badly Haylah treated her friends, completely based on this alternate reality she made up in her brain. Honestly, it was like when people get made at someone for what they did in their dreams. We also haven't touched on the fact that Leo manipulated Haylah and was just overall terrible and the book still ends with them being friends and the eventual love interest we get for our main character is a guy who has lowkey bullied her the entire time they've known each other, but it's alright because he secretly always liked her and just didn't know how to express it. Lastly, this book's worst offense was not being funny in the slightest. I know stand-up is all about the delivery but they kept saying Leo's set was only good because of Haylah's writing so according to the book delivery means nothing so I'm going to review this like it's nothing (even thogh that's complete bullshit) and absolutely NONE of her jokes or inner monologue made me laugh at all. Some of her jokes even just felt a bitter, rather than a joke. Again, actual delivery makes a HUGE difference but the book ignored that fact so I did the same.

It was okay. I didn't like the pacing, the fat shame "jokes" became boring way too fast. There wasn't a real plot or if it was I just couldn't find it.
It was okay.

Pretty Funny for a Girl is a humorous take on the awkwardness of adolescence. Plus-sized Haylah is a sarcastic, witty, comedian-to-be, who teams up with her crush, Leo, to ghostwrite his comedy set, but somewhere along the way, everything that can go wrong in a teen girl's life does. Filled with humor, likeable characters, and realistic dialogue, it is an entertaining story.

I am rating it a 3.5 because I didn't enjoy the repeated fat-shaming in a "body positive" book, especially since it came from the main character about herself and was mirrored by some of the other characters. I also felt like at times the emotions of the book could have been brought out more to contrast her genuine, complex emotional feelings with the lightness of the comedy; because of that lack of contrast it fell a bit flat for me. I recommend this book for people who enjoy reading typical young adult high school drama combined with a sarcastic banter.

Advanced readers copy was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love YA because most of the stories revolve around the MC finding themselves. Everyone can remember what it was like to be a teen and deal with cliques and the populars and the drama. Pretty Funny for a Girl brings me back to those days, and while I was never an aspiring comedian, I can relate a lot to Haylah's story. I loved that this book featured body diversity and I wish more stories did. I also thought that the infusion of comedy into this story was incredibly unique and made for a fun, light story. 

I read an ARC of this book through Netgalley. I would love to hear an audiobook version of this book. I hope that they set up the comedy sets well so that the reader can get a sense of the delivery of the jokes. One of the issues with reading this book in ebook or physical form is that you are unable to hear how the jokes are delivered and it's more difficult to appreciate the jokes. 

I'd recommend this book for anyone looking for a YA book about a young, funny, woman trying to find her confidence in a patriarchal world where women are put into a box.

I really enjoyed this! There was so much body positivity and I loved that Pig didn't feel like she needed to change in order to be seen as desirable! Because that isn't true!

I really brilliant book that is a light hearted comedy! I love the writing style and I will definitely be reading more books from this author in the future

Overall a good book but a little too much self-depracating humor for my taste. It just didn't appeal to me overall. I do appreciate that the main character was a larger girl, but just wish she didn't find the need to go along with the insults all of the time. Just my opinion!

Pretty Funny For A Girl is an amazing book full of wit. The book is a great. The storyline is great. The weekend I read this I started on the Friday and by the Sunday I had finished the book. Haylah finds herself listening in to her crushes conversation with his friends but so she finds herself in an awkward situation where she helps him out writing for a competition but in the end she ends up getting her on back on her crush (sorry, a bit of a spoiler) but that will be as much as I say although I definitely think that the ending for Haylah was amazing. It would be great if there was a follow up book where it checks in with Haylah a few years from when the book is set.

Hilarious story! The book was fun to read. The one thing I notice about "body positive" books is that they are not body positive at all. But the writer here has achieved what I want to see in coming of age novels and truly have spoken the minds of teenagers.

A one time read if u like to read of developing crushes, a strong protagonist, and are interested in stories related to comedy. Funny and awesome narration

Thank you to Peachtree Publishing for sending me an ARC! 

This book kind didn't meet my expectations. I would have given it a 2.5 but I'll round it up just because it is good to see girl comedian rep. To me, the book's pacing was very off. It felt like some parts in the book that weren't very important were too in depth. The book just felt like it was dragging on for the whole time. There was not too-too much plot going on. I'm going to be honest, when the boy Daniel, who bullied her, was mentioned, I didn't even remember who he was so I wish that we would have seen him develop as a character and just see him interact with Haylah even more. Most of the characters were mostly static and I felt that Haylah's growth come upon so quickly and I think the book should've been over the span of a longer time because it felt like it only was a week that it was happening. This reminds me of another thing I am confused on in the book. It is never stated how old our main character is and she seems somewhat childish at times in how she approaches things. Sadly, in the end, I was reading this book but just kind of wanted to finish it. I wish I could have enjoyed it more, but alas, it was not for me. Hopefully, all of you readers will connect more with the story and characters.

This was fantastic! I love coming of age stories and this one did not disappoint! This is a new author for me and I will be checking more out from them!

This sweet, coming-of-age YA novel set in London focuses on teenage Haylah Swinton, who cares for her young brother while dreaming of a career in comedy. With important messages about body positivity and an honest assessment of the mistaken belief that "girls can't be funny," Rebecca Elliott's story is inspiring, warm, and often laugh-out-loud funny.

Pretty Funny for a Girl is one of the most hilarious books you will read this year, with instantly likeable characters who grow so much as the story progresses, this is an absolutely fantastic book that you will make you cry with laughter.