Big Girl Panties: A Novel by Stephanie Evanovich Edition: Hardcover Price: $18.63
3.5 Stars But With Reservations, June 28, 2013 This review is from: Big Girl Panties: A Novel (Hardcover)    Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich is a rollicking and poignant romantic comedy about a young widow who decides to get in shape...and winds up getting her groove back—and a whole lot more! Holly Brennan used food to comfort herself through her husband’s illness and death. Now she’s alone at age thirty-two. And she weighs more than she ever has. When fate throws her in the path of Logan Montgomery, personal trainer to pro athletes, and he offers to train her, Holly concludes it must be a sign. Much as she dreads the thought of working out, Holly knows she needs to put on her big girl panties and see if she can sweat out some of her grief. Soon, the easy intimacy and playful banter of their training sessions lead Logan and Holly to most intense and steamy workouts. But can Holly and Logan go the distance as a couple now that she’s met her goals—and other men are noticing?   This book was confusing for me. On one hand, I liked it and on the other, I really did not. I could see what message the author was trying to convey to us. Te problem was that Ms Evanovich had a bit of a problem communicating that message in a way that was clear and convincing. This book was by no means a comedic book. It dealt with very difficult issues - widowhood, morbid obesity, a lack of self-respect and even bullying. Holly has never been a thin woman, and with her body type, she never will be. However, the fact that she recently nursed her husband through a long bout with cancer has not been kind to her figure. One day as she is flying home from Toronto, she has the bad luck (or it could be good luck) to sit next to one of the most handsome men she has ever seen. The ticket taker wanted Holly to buy two seats to accommodate her butt, and of course, Mr. Adonis (Logan) sees her as fat, sloppy, pathetic and possibly smelly. Now mind you Mr. Adonis (Logan) is a personal trainer to athletes and fashion models. He is a serial dater of 6-foot tall blonde-haired snotty, stick figure women, sorry I mean beautifully slender models. Holly sits next to Logan they get to talking and by the end of the flight Logan decides to take her on as a client. Some parts of the book are truly wonderful, there are believable conversations between the protagonists, things happen to move the story in the right direction. Then there are parts of this book that you may be wishing to pluck out your own eyeballs - parts where the protagonists are not acting like the mature adults the reader knows them to be. The sexual interludes can be hot one moment and downright silly the next. Ms Evanovich decided to make a pair of secondary characters, fetishists and does not do a very good job with it. The ending is somewhat trite and clichéd, but we finally get to the meat or the heart of the issues that both Holly and Logan have, and while Holly's answer to adversity this time is to walk out and go back to a hated life, things do work out in the end. You will have a bit of difficulty stretching your disbelief for this book and I think that that is the main issue I had with it. I know it is fiction and it is romantic fiction to boot so we get to play in a different playground than other authors play in. But even though it is fiction, the main part of the book still has to be believable and I'm afraid that this book strays just a little too far from credibility for my taste. *E-arc supplied by publisher, paper ARC supplied by Vine*