Waiting On…Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

“Waiting on Wednesday” is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine!

This week I’m waiting on…

Title Dumplin’
Author Julie Murphy
Pages 384 Pages
Genre Young Adult, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Romance
Publisher Balzer + Bray
To Be Published September 15th, 2015
Find It On Goodreads

Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant — along with several other unlikely candidates — to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City — and maybe herself most of all.

With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine, Dumplin’ is guaranteed to steal your heart.

So. Ordinarily when I choose which upcoming releases to highlight each month in my Waiting On Wednesday feature, I make the conscious choice to showcase books that will be published no further than one or two months in the future. It gives myself (and my readers) a relatively reasonable amount of time to wait and simply makes more sense to touch upon books that will be released in the imminent future. But when it comes to the work of Julie Murphy, I can’t be calm. I can’t be rational. In fact, my blogging rule book goes entirely out the proverbial window.

I’ve made no secret of my admiration for Julie Murphy’s work in the past. Ever since I closed the final page on her raw, insightful, unforgettable debut, Side Effects May Vary, in March 2014, I haven’t been able to stop thinking (or stop talking) about it. I wrote a review. I made a wallpaper. I recommended it to family, friends, and fellow shoppers and virtual strangers at the local bookstore. And I waited. In fact, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the author’s next release from the instant I finished her first. Dumplin’ promises to be more than worth that wait.