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YOU AND ME AND HIM by Kris Dinnison

YOU AND ME AND HIM

by Kris Dinnison

Pub Date: July 7th, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-30112-2
Publisher: HMH Books

The arrival of crushworthy new student Tom drives a wedge between Maggie, who is straight, and her best friend, Nash, who is gay.

Neither Maggie nor Nash has ever kissed anyone or had a boyfriend, a situation Maggie attributes to her being fat and Nash, to the lack of out gay teens in their Seattle suburb. On the first day of school, the pair spots Tom, and Nash calls dibs, a running joke based on the assumption that neither Nash nor Maggie will have a chance. When Tom unexpectedly does start hanging out with them, particularly with Maggie, both Maggie's friendship with Nash and her certainty that she is undesirable are challenged. Maggie's generosity with baked goods and her struggles against her mom's food-related nagging add some depth to the story, but readers are privy to frustratingly little interiority despite the first-person narration. They see Maggie have her first kiss and tell off the gym teacher who continually harps on her size, but her experiences of these moments remain opaque. Stilted and sometimes clunkily expository dialogue also reveals little, making several of the book's many interpersonal conflicts more confusing than compelling.

The (mostly) fat-positive message is important, but its delivery falters.

(Fiction. 12-18)