Fat Chance, Charlie Vega -- Crystal Maldonado - Paperback

Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard.

Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.

A New England Book Award Winner!

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it's hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn't help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But there's one person who's always in Charlie's corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing--he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her?

Because it's time people did.

A sensitive, funny, and painfully honest coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

An NPR Best Book of the Year
An Amazon Best Children's Book of the Year
A POPSUGAR Best New Young Adult Novel
A Cosmopolitan Best New Book
A Bustle Most Anticipated Debut
A Forbes Most Notable Young Adult Book
A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee
A Latinxs in Publishing Best Books of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Year
A Business Insider Best Young Adult Romance Book


Author: Crystal Maldonado
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 01/11/2022
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.70h x 6.00w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780823451319
Age Range: 14-UP

About the Author
Crystal Maldonado is a writer by night and a marketer and social media manager by day. She has been published in Latina magazine, The Hartford Courant, and Dogster, and is the co-founder of the online magazine Positively Smitten. Fat Chance, Charlie Vega is her debut novel, and was bought in a competitive pre-empt as part of a two-book deal. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband, her dog, and her super-duper adorable baby daughter.