On the Plus Side-a standalone
by Jenny L. Howe-new author for me
Rating: 4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publication 12/26/23, Read 12/6/23

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for this ARC💛 ! I voluntarily give my honest review and all opinions expressed are my own.

✔️ Contemporary Romance
✔️ Animal lovers
✔️Makeover/Reality TV
✔️ Body positivity
✔️h is an artist

Summary- Everly Winters, 24, makes sure she's forgettable. She dresses in black, shrinks herself around other people, and has a comfortable boring job as a receptionist. She is nominated to be the new guest on a popular makeover/reality TV show "On the Plus Side" which champions plus side women. They help choose a great wardrobe and lifestyle changes. Logan is the lumberjack grumpy cameraman that will be following her everywhere. Everly and Logan get to know each other. He stands up for her and doesn't let her belittle herself. Things become more serious, and their relationship appears on the show.

The characters- Jazzy and Stanton are the best cheerleaders a girl could have. They encourage Everly to follow her dreams and pursue things that she actually likes-art design. James, her coworker & art designer at the marketing firm, is like a lot of men in the workplace. He sees Everly as weak, underestimates her, and uses her to get ahead. Everly has a crush on him but would never act on it. She believes they are friends and helps him whenever he asks. Sady is the show runner who pretends to be concerned about Everly. She turns out to be the enemy against her and Logan. Everly's mother Penny is another enemy. She is so judgmental and pushes her issues about weight onto Everly. The only one in her corner besides Logan is her grandmother Helen who is deceased. She loved her unconditionally and encouraged her to be whoever she wanted.

Overall, the romance was cute. Grumpy boy Logan really softens up to Everly observing what she goes through. He has his own body issues and feels obligated to Sady for taking a chance on him with a job years ago. This is a journey of self-love and falling in love with a big FAT HEA!

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the eARC.
I loved this book! Romance and a reality show always work so well for me, and with this being fat positive, it only made the book better. Everly was such a richly created character. She had such depth and the author shared enough that it was easy to get to know her, yet was never information heavy. And Logan. what a wonderful man he was, and it was easy to root for him. The show concept was so unique and needed. I would easily watch something like this. I enjoyed seeing how Everly grew in all of her relationships throughout this book - especially the one with herself. It felt realistic and inspiring. This was such a fun book, and I know I'll be thinking about it for a while.

Love the positivity in the writing and in the characters. Has humor, body representation so much tension and a grump cameraman.

Sorry. It’s a DNF (at 25%) for me. I was really excited about this one, and I love a book with plus size representation! However, Everly constantly wanted to blend/fade into the background. And I get it…she has been traumatized by her terrible mother her constantly tells her she is “too much.” Additionally, On the Plus Side just could not hold my attention.

Thank you to Netgalley and Publishers for giving me a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

“No One should be expected to exhibit self-control before ten in the morning.” Here are reasons to read the contemporary book:

A receptionist - Everly is a receptionist who lacks the confidence to be a graphic designer. She prefers to just sit unnoticed by everyone.
Plus Size show - so when she gets nominated for her favorite plus size “what not to wear” type show, she is excited
Cameraman - She uses the time to figure out what she wants, but can’t help but notice the cute but grumpy cameraman who is always there
Finding herself - But finding herself might mean doing it on her own, so she struggles to understand how he might fit into the picture

When I first started reading this book, I really expected it to be like other plus size tv show books I had read. I was very surprisingly wrong. Everly has trauma from her parents and other people in her life who don’t support her in how she needs, only in the way they know how. She was very relatable in how she sees herself. But also the cinnamon roll of a cameraman is one of the best things about this book. I loved the representation here and how the story was told!

Everly Winters loves her favorite makeover tv show called On The Plus Side. She is stunned when she finds out that she has been selected for the upcoming season. She loves how the show helps bring out the confidence in plus size people. The idea is to improve social confidence, appearance and work situations. Everly feels she has dimmed since her grandmother passed away. She is hoping that the show will help showcase her talents with her art. She often helps the design teams at work but without recognition. Being on tv comes with pluses of the hunky plaid shirted cameraman Logan. But there are negatives too. And she isn’t in control of the narrative.

I liked this much better than Howe’s first book, The Make-Up Test (Sept 2022). I love how Howe writes realistically about having to navigate a larger size in a world that isn’t built for you. I’ve felt and thought so many of the things that Everly does in this story. I loved the premise of the tv show too. The representation is great. But on the weaker side Everly is very reactionary and her emotional ping ponging drained me. Her inner dialogue is almost non stop. Logan is okay as a love interest but I don’t know anything about him other than he loves dogs and is talented with his job. I wasn’t sure for a long time if he really liked Everly or was playing it up for the sake of show ratings. I don’t know what he saw in her that appealed to him or felt like a connection. Also I wished for more spice. The heat is built up well and then the door is closed.

I was fortunate to receive both the book and audiobook and I alternated between both, listening to about sixty percent. I enjoyed the narration by Zura Johnson. Thank you to NetGalley, Spotify Audiobooks and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC and audio and I am leaving a voluntary review. (3.5 Stars)

I had a really great time with this one! I liked Everly as a main character and really liked how the author framed her personal journey on the On the Plus Side show and really enjoyed seeing her flourish as the book went on. I liked the reality show as the setting of this story as well as reality show based romance books is something I do genuinely enjoy. I liked her and Logan together as a couple and thought they really worked well together. Unfortunately I really disliked the ending which put a little bit of a damper on an otherwise excellent reading experience. The conflict added at the end was with a third character (not the love interest) and it kind of felt like it came out of nowhere and I didn't really feel like it served any purpose except to derail the big event the book had spent the whole story building up to....and then we never got that event because of this conflict which made the ending feel pretty anticlimatic because I was really looking forward to that event!

On the Plus Size is a beautiful fat positive romance. I loved the MMC and the way he treated the FMC. They seemed to fit together really well. I love the concept of the show that Everly was on! (The good parts of course) I’d definitely watch something similar to it.

rating: 2.75 stars

i have mixed feelings about this book. overall, i did not wholly *dislike* it. however, i think i’ll probably forget about it in a day or two and it wasn’t something i was really enjoying reading. i was just kind of… reading with little feeling. *sigh* the story was cute — a plus-sized woman on a reality show a la ‘what not to wear’, growing to accept herself, and falling in love with the cameraman. so much potential!

my main problem is that everything was incredibly surface-level. i feel like i barely knew both our main characters: Everly and Logan. i think this couldn’t been helped some if the POV was 1st person instead of 3rd person. it really felt like we were just getting a gloss-over of their lives with little development or depth.

the ending felt rushed and i don’t think everly got the conclusion she deserved (no spoilers but it didn’t really come together). some of it was cringe, like the two TV show hosts that just popped up at random times. but despite that were somehow… friends with everly? i don’t know. the math wasn’t mathing.

what i wanted was MORE. more about logan! i really liked where he was going but i need know: who is he? what are his motives? how does he feel about everly while he’s filming her? pls, let me inside his head!! more about everly! i need her outside of her job. i need her sketching in her free time. reading the books she makes covers for. doing more!

le sigh

thank you to st. martin’s & netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

I'm a fat person who was a fat kid who grew up watching What Not To Wear and this book was very healing for me.

If you have ever watched what not to wear you know that people are nominated by someone in their lives and the hosts show up and surprise them and then essentially rip them apart for what they're wearing and how they look. There's entire segments dedicated to trashing the contestants entire wardrobe and doing new shopping and then hair and makeup and if you ever watch an episode with a fat contestant, you know and remember how truly damaging some of that was. The focus the entire time is on looking slimmer and finding things that are more flattering and the focus was never on what made that person happy or comfortable.

On the plus side has the set up of What Not to Wear with the energy of Queer Eye. I admittedly have not watched as much Queer eye but I have seen it and I love that they're focus is more on the person and on the plus side goes even farther. They have fat hosts and the whole setup is on making sure that the contestant gets some sort of fulfillment in their life and helps them reach their goals which include wardrobe and hair and makeup and everything but that's not the focus of everything.

So essentially we have Everly who is a receptionist and she's a little bit mousy. She has a well-meaning slim mother who is really fat phobic and has really discouraged Everly from pursuing her own dreams and living authentically.

Our love interest name is Logan and he is a cameraman for the TV show and he is grumpy. So grumpy and I loved him. One of my biggest critiques with this author's debut book was that the love interest was a piece of s*** and that the fat main character questioned herself the entire time throughout the entire book and through the end of it about whether or not she was justified in her own behavior. That's not the case here. We have a grumpy but loving love interest who loves and adores Everly and all of her beautiful fatness and Everly is confident herself. Despite having her mom in the background nitpicking her decisions and her wardrobe, she really learns that she is valuable and allowed to take up space. And not only that she's allowed to take up space that people want her to take up space.

I really really adored everything about this book. I was a bit hesitant because like I said, the author's debut missed the mark for me but this one is easily a favorite.

There were a lot of moments that Everly had on the TV show with the hosts where she was seeing herself fully for the first time that I cried to. Being fat for your whole life is something that I don't think people recognize the trauma of and not because fat is bad but because of the way the world treats fat people. Being told that you need to be smaller and quieter every moment of your existence takes a toll and it is hard to work through and get past. A few of my favorite moments were Everly deciding on the word that fits her best and also about her conversations where she talked about her grandma and I especially loved all of her interactions with Logan. I genuinely just really really enjoyed this book.

This one does have some social media elements where Reddit forms are included and it doesn't always translate super well to audiobook. I don't care how many likes comments shares etc something has and well that can be lost over in a print book having the narrator read out every single time was a bit annoying. And they're not called likes comments and shares are called like sparkles and thumbs downs or something else but you get the idea. That was really one of my only critiques. This is one that I would recommend not only to fat people but also to thin people because I think seeing Everly's journey is really important for everyone and sometimes it can help straight-size people understand that even if they're well meaning, their actions and words have an impact whether or not the fat people in your life have said something to you about it.

I really enjoyed this romance by Jenny L. Howe. It's the first plus size romance that struck me as genuine rather than forced. Everly's return to her vivid self, with the help of a reality show team, is wonderful to watch, as is her developing relationship with cameraman Logan.

Everly's grandmother died a few years ago, and Everly shrank from the vivid, adventurous woman her grandmother encouraged her to be to someone who tried to blend into the scenery, not trying to reach new goals or stand out, but comfortable blending in to the scenery. Everything from her clothing choices to her career plans fade to pale versions of her former self. It doesn't help that her mother is constantly trying to get Everly to dress to "cover her flaws" and to lose weight.

When an anonymous someone nominates her to participate in her favorite reality show, On the Plus Side, Every's over the moon at the idea of finding herself again, meeting the cohosts, and moving forward despite her fears. But there are unexpected twists along the way, including a manipulative showrunner determined to make Every's story about a non-existent romance rather than her true goals, the discovery that her crush is someone different than she thought, and her interactions with a very grumpy cameraman that make Every's experience richer and more challenge than expected.

I had few complaints with the book, and it's probably based on my experience with this sort of romance. I kept waiting for another shoe to drop, another challenge/betrayal to appear when there wasn't one. And the relationship development between Everly and Nathan seemed really fast. On the other hand, all of the other relationships were stellarly written, and I loved the overall story of Everly and Nathan.

I highly recommend this engaging read.

I really loved this story!

Everly is a plus sized woman who has forgotten who she really is. She's stuck at a desk job and lives in her brother's garage apartment, never to stick herself out into the world and try something new. In comes the team from her favorite TV show - On the Plus Side! Jazzy and Stanton work to make over each person's life - and not just in the physical way, which I liked a lot. This book showed how Everly worked to find her inner voice that she had pushed down and ignored for so long and I loved the ending - she's found who she's meant to be and found love, too!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC!

I LOVED this book. I loved the premise of this tv show and wish it was real!! The chemistry between the main characters was so great.

I absolutely enjoyed this book. The author eloquently blended a plus size storyline, reality TV and romance for a book I couldn't put down. This feel good read tackled some tough aspects of living in a world that shames "fat" people. Everly lost herself after the death of her grandma, and with the help of the reality On the Plus Side she'll find her joy again.

Logan, the camera man for the show, is fantastic at his job. He captures her every moment, even her constant catching his eye and heart. Throughout the book, he knew just what to say like "to me, you're what matters." SWOON. This sexy, lumberjack, aka camera man was the cutest and how they fall was written perfectly.

Overall, this is a great romance and the cast of characters added so much to the story.

Thank you St. Martin's Press for the complimentary copy.

A cute rom-com, thought everly was frustrating at times, but what leading lady in a book like this isn’t? If this sounds like something you would like… you probably will. Logan gets five heart eyes 😍 though!

3.5 stars.

I enjoyed "On the Plus Side" by Jenny L. Howe for the most part! I loved the overall message of this novel, that being plus-sized and fat doesn't mean you shouldn't take up space or be who you are, that you should honor and cultivate who you are and your self-esteem based on your *own* standards, not the standards of others or what society dictates. I liked watching main character Everley's growth throughout the story. While she makes leaps and bounds in discovering who she wants to be and what she wants to do with her life, I will admit, she is sort of an exhausting character. I enjoyed Zura Johnson's narration of this character. She makes Everly feel authentic and lived-in as a person. I liked all of the reality show elements that get integrated throughout the novel. I don't watch much reality television, but I found this aspect to be fun, interesting, and compelling, especially the way that people get manipulated into doing things for ratings. I also love how Howe navigates tough topics like abusive parents, grief, loss (human and animal), and online hate and integrates them seamlessly with the more humorous, self-reflective, and entertainment-driven elements. Try as I might to get over it, it rubbed me the wrong way that, at first, Everly felt like she needed to be small and "take up as little space as possible." I get that she changes her mindset throughout the story, but this is something that fat people are taught to do over and over again by society! She should have gone the other way and taken up more space! She was clearly capable of doing that! I also feel like the ball was dropped where Logan is concerned. He felt like he was just *there,* and I didn't absorb a whole lot about him and his life apart from the basics. We know he's a cameraman for the show, that he has a tight-knit relationship with one of the other people working on the show, that he loves and adopts elderly dogs and gives them a comfortable home before they die, and that he wants to open a dog sanctuary. That's about it. I feel like Howe could have gone deeper with this character. I unfortunately didn't feel much of a spark or any chemistry between Everly and Logan. I *really* wanted to, but I just didn't. Their romance feels underbaked and frequently forced (and not just because of their forced proximity). I disliked the third-act conflict, but appreciate how Everly and Logan actually talk through their issues instead of ignoring them (even though they shouldn't have existed in the first place). Still, this book can be frequently lovely, funny, and charming. It's not too long and is not overly preachy (though Howe is preaching to the choir with me, so some readers might disagree).

Thank you to NetGalley, Jenny L. Howe, St. Martin's Press, and St. Martin's Griffin for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for my review.

This was such a lovely book that I really enjoyed. I really loved the main characters and the journey that they went on together. I also really liked the element of the reality tv show, though the filming schedule was not the most believable. The family conversations were heartbreaking and I really enjoyed the romance.

Everly and Logan are absolutely freaking everythinggggg!!!

I seriously loved everything about this so so much!

I liked this one, but I really feel like I should have loved it. It had everything I like in a romance, good characters, a good storyline, good relationships, a happily ever after and some sparks. But for me it dragged a bit. I still suggest it, it's cute and a lot of fun!

4 stars

I read Howe's debut novel last year and while the love interest in that book was absolutely horrendous, I loved Howe's writing and the characterization of her main character enough to know that she would only grow from there. On the Plus Side absolutely proved that!

It's absolutely insane how much I feel like Howe is writing for me specifically. Beyond just the way that she captures what it is like to live in a fat body so succinctly, I have been weirdly in the exact same career circumstances as her main characters at the moment that I picked up each book. That coincidence has made the process of reading her books absolutely addictive, almost as if I can use them as a how-to guide on how to live my life. The characters and the situations that they find themselves in always feel true to life and on top of that, they are just downright entertaining.

The best part about this novel is how much the writing of the romance blossomed with the introduction of a fantastic love interest. Logan is a protective and grumpy man with a mouth on him and I was OBSESSED. It absolutely proved that the romance in The Make-Up Test was just a fluke and I couldn't be happier about it.

The only thing that made this book not a five star was that it was 50 to 75 pages too long. Other than that, this was an absolutely delightful romance and I need more people to put this on their radar.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review! I will be withholding my review from Goodreads and my other social media platforms until St. Martin's Press holds their employees accountable for their racist and antisemitic actions.