DUMB LOVE

This fat-girls-need-love-too story lives up to its billing as a “screwball comedy,” but also delivers a convincing portrait of a feisty high-school girl fighting to keep her unconventional family together. Carlotta endures the constant taunts of her classmates as she tries to weave her own romantic fantasies into a romance novel she’s writing in competition with Andrea, her skinny rival. Carlotta hopes to keep her wandering mom together with her alcoholic “stepfather,” and away from her real father, whom Carlotta hasn’t seen for years. Meanwhile, she concocts plots to get together with Pete, whom she desires, and avoid Walker, whom she doesn’t. While a bit too choppy, no doubt the comic mayhem will delight many young readers. The nice thing about this story is that it isn’t all surface; it has a beating heart. Well done. (Fiction. YA)